Landscape

It's September, and that changing-of-seasons feel is in the air. The song "River" is stuck in my head, and I think about it for a long while. I wish I could skate away, teach my feet to fly, go somewhere new, and create a distraction for this feeling that can only be described as lost in the immense amount of familiarity. A trip to the ocean would soothe the soul, yes. Oh to feel the chaos of waves crashing and wind tousling. But only for a moment, I know. Travels to far away places create beautiful distractions to ordinary life, but they are just that - temporary diversions to the familiar.

My mind and ideas have certainly been shaped by experiences in foreign places, and I'm so grateful to have these memories. I think about the remote villages, ancient cities, mystic beaches, and other places I have seen and haven't seen - so far removed from my normal life. I think about that amazing moment standing at Beluga Point, watching the whales and the sea lions chase their dinners in the chilling Alaskan waters during the Pacific salmon run - salmon so thick they looked like an island of mud across the inlet.

I think about that warm and sunny afternoon staring out from the Eiffel Tower upon the Parisian cityscape, and I remember wondering if the lives of the people below were much different from my own.

I had read about Angkor Wat before going to Cambodia yet still wasn't prepared for it's grandeur architecture and the ancient mythology that needed no words, but rather spoke of itself in the incense that permeated in a thick cloud wherever we went.

I close my eyes and try to remember the unbelievable details of indescribable paintings and tapestries in the Sistine Chapel, where, if I could have stood for weeks, it wouldn't have been long enough to take it all in.

I've gazed upon 3rd-century stained glass and the stories they illustrated throughout Europe's elaborate cathedrals. I've listened to the tragic account of Stockholm's Vasa while running my hand over the carvings and details of the massive vessel. I've wished upon coins tossed in Rome's Trevi Fountain, climbed Zurich's Loorenkopf tower, traversed the 23 miles of Peru's Inca Trail, explored the ruins of Machu Picchu, walked along Lisbon's colorful streets, floated 14,000 feet above the Algarve, sunk my toes in the mystical Piha black sands beach, and rafted the white waters of New Zealand's Rotorua River. I've sat in silence, with no words to be found, in the back bed of a truck making it's way through the rubbled streets of Port-au-Prince.

The late Irish poet and philosopher, John O'Donohue, stated that mankind is so strange that we never ask, "Where did yesterday go?" We just take it for granted that it's gone forever." He speaks about cultivating our inner landscape, about the true colors of beauty, the honest description of friendship, the glorious sound of a good conversation, and our relationship with time. Instead of traveling to far away places, we should travel inward and spend some quiet time reflecting on the beauty there, focusing on that inner landscape. Only on that map can we find a place from which we never need to depart.. lasting beauty and meaning, true peace and rest.

The Hispano-Roman Stoic philosopher, Seneca, also writes of this in his Letter III, saying, "For a delight in bustling about is not industry - it is only the restless energy of a haunted mind."

So when I find myself with this restlessness, what I use to call my need to escape the familiarity of life, I might try to travel inward a bit more. There's surly a landscape there I have yet to explore.