Mrs. Teabody Urges You to Venture Forth

"Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along 

Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone."

-- Lee Ann Womack

Pre-dawn and Venus and Jupiter are passing each other quietly; a friend sends a text from half a world away letting me know that Prague is as beautiful as he'd hoped. A pile of clothing on my nicely-made bed awaits only some toiletries and in less than an hour I'll meet up with a friend I have known since I was a little, little girl and the two of us will be off on one of our adventures. God willing we will  be safe in our travels--she driving, me as navigator.

The world IS a wide and wonderful place, you know. By the standards of some folks I travel too much. By the standards of some other folks, I have a very narrow range for my wanderings. When it comes to how far anyone ventures away from the known, travel becomes a personal choice.

There's a moment -- sometimes several moments in the course of a trip when one has an experience that suggests it would be easier to "just stay at home."  For me that moment  often comes when I am sharing a far-too-heavy-to-be-up-in-the-air-in-the-first-place plane cruising along at 34, 000 feet. Turbulence. I hate it. You probably hate it, too. So far I have survived all my episodes of turbulence as have you who read this, but it is so easy to imagine that it is your plane that will spiral back to the earth and  - - -ka-pow, that's the end of it. 

Another moment when I flirted with the idea  of just staying home came as I  negotiated the steep steps of the Minack theatre -- built into the side of a cliff. Perilous. Precipitous. But the steepness is nothing compared to the audacity of one woman's vision and resolve to carve a theatre out of a cliff.

Another moment that confirmed the necessity of travel came when I  took a walk from Penzance to Mousehole solo. I strolled Newlyn Harbor with its vessels ranging from tiny two-man boats to huge, tall-masted, heavy-duty fishing ships. I was watching a tough young sailor gently feeding bread to some cygnets when I met a couple who had been married for 65 years. He "Clive" explained that the young man was a fisherman about to set out on a ten-day stint at sea. 

He went on to describe the comings and goings of almost every ship in the harbor--even a fishing boat that had been purchased for conversion into a house boat. "You surely know a lot about this place," I said. He explained that  every day he and his wife "Claire" stroll  down to the harbor from their home over a mile away to "have a look at the sea." 

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asked stretching his arm to indicate that vast stretch of ocean that holds Penzance, Newlyn and Mousehole in its briny enchantment. His eyes are full of wonder; his hand clutches hers in easy amity. She looks at him and at the sea. She pats the hand that holds hers with her other hand. There is love.

And even though I need no reminders that the world is, indeed, a beautiful place, I am reminded (once again) that turbulence and the fear of falling into the sea will not keep me from future travels. Maybe it shouldn't keep you safe in your harbor, either.