Member-only story
Go: Small Stories Of A Dedicated Traveler
Where does the urge to travel come from — our ancestors?
Go: 1. move from one place to another; travel.
2: leave; depart.
My earliest urge was to go. Get out. Run away. Be anywhere but here. It’s never left me.
New Zealanders joke about going OS, always have. My eldest sister left when I was ten, and sent me postcards. My favorite was of the cliff divers in Acapulco. She went to England on a ship, the Northern Star. In those days it took six weeks. I wanted to be like her, but more than that, I wanted to go. Somewhere, anywhere.
I did finally go when I was 20. My friends had left before me, mostly traveling to Australia. That wasn’t far enough for me. After a geography teacher in high school showed us all of his photographs of Africa I decided that’s where I wanted to go. South Africa. I was going alone. Nobody else wanted to travel there with me. It was fine by me. Then at the last minute a friend came, too. So, different things happened.
Serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
The kinds of serendipitous things that happen when you travel alone become different with a companion. You probably take fewer risks. One of you is the…
