Travel
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My Year with Montaigne: Montaigne, the Traveler pt III
We glean from studying the travel journals a man who sloughed off his national and cultural trappings with aplomb. He was open minded and interested, willing to go out of his way, sometimes to the dismay of others in his party, to investigate something that struck him as interesting. His ancient hero, Socrates, considered himself Continue reading
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My Year with Montaigne: Montaigne, the Traveler pt II
“Monsieur de Montaigne drank of the said water eleven mornings, nine glasses each for eight days and seven glasses each for three days, and bathed five times. He found the water easy to drink and always passed it before dinner.” The first third of so of the travel journals were written by Montaigne’s secretary, an Continue reading
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My Year with Montaigne: Montaigne, the Traveler
“It is not my deeds that I write down; it is myself, it is my essence.” II.6 Imagine: Western Europe, the year is 1580. Plague is rampant; war is ceaseless; roads, such as they are, are not only dangerous, but muddy, without signage, and peppered with dubious lodgings; traveling alone is too dangerous to risk; Continue reading
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The Grand Canyon and other philosophies
I’ve been engaged the last couple years in correspondence with a young man in prison. He is a family friend who made a bad decision. He has a bent for big ideas so naturally the two of us have had a great deal to talk about. We had a recent exchange, a portion of which Continue reading
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A Lesson in Three Wishes
I learned a few things while living on the road these last fifteen months. They are simple things that I think I’d learned previously but had forgotten. That is one thing travel does well, it shifts the course of things if you let it, revealing both old and new. The sun comes up in the Continue reading
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The action of no action.
We’d been camping in the Laguna Mountains for a few days and had the place to ourselves. We had no internet and no cell coverage. Our days were lazy and we filled them with books, walks, and the occasional nap. Breaking the habit of connectivity is difficult and a thing probably best experienced only when Continue reading
...the house I live in... 