I think if I'd been born in earlier times I could have been an explorer. Not a long distance explorer, I don't think I have the resilience for that, but I would have loved tracing small steams to their source.
Growing up in Australia we were taught all about the early explorers of our country and these stories always enthralled me. Such brave men (they were always men)! I always suspected that most of them were slightly crazy and driven but their bravery was never in doubt.
These days I like to do my own interpretation of "intrepid explorer" but it's all been done before and there are always those damn boundary fences that put an end to my adventures.
This afternoon I set out to explore the farm where I am house-sitting in a direction different to one I've taken before. Sure enough, the boundary fence put a stop to my wanderings. But close to the boundary I came across this lovely sight.
Fallen logs across the creek. It was so natural and beautiful!
Changing the subject a bit .....anyone who reads this blog regularly knows how I love where I live. But, staying at another farm in the area, I accept now that we are not ideally positioned for sunsets. At home there are a hill, scraggy pine trees and power lines in all my sunsets. Here, I just have to walk to the edge of the lawn (to get the power lines out of the shot) and I have lovely sunsets. Last night I was blessed with this sight:
Did you ever read of Mary Kingsley? Woman explorer in Africa in the late 19th c. I read about her many many years ago and since then carry in my head an image of women explorers dressed in Victorian dress, with a trail of native servants following with all the luggage. I'm sure it involved a lot of hardship anyway; I just sometimes feel that's what I'd need to get anywhere at all these days.
ReplyDeleteI love the internet because I don't have to carry a suitcase to get out there and explore.
I too grew up on stories of explorers - we aren't that far, in memory, from a time when there was still frontier land here. One of my favorite books is one about women explorers in Canada's west - unimaginable hardship, and all in a long wollen skirt.
ReplyDeleteA superb sky in the second shot
ReplyDeleteExplorers were men because women didn't do things like that. Few were allowed the freedom and the choices that we have now.
ReplyDeleteI would have wanted to be a pioneer coming across America in the 1800's. I might have died in childbirth or been killed by Indians but I would have seen our country in it's beginnings, before there were cities and fences. I would have been the "tomboy" who learned to ride a horse and shoot a gun.
You and I might have been women explorers, on two different continents,in another life but this is now and we are not spring chickens.
So... we hike and walk to find the source of a creek or the end of a trail because it's there. These are the boundaries of our lives, now, but this is our chance to be explorers.
I say...Let's create our own frontier and find the "source" of our own lives within the limits of "now".
I love exploring....but only when I have company with whom to explore. I think it's something to do with the sharing of experiences in retrospect. Sharing experiences with ones self is nowhere near as much fun.
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