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The Right of Solitude
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
I have been looking over some of my photos recently. Fiji feels like decades ago. Africa is definitely the rawest place I have ever been. In Fiji I rode in a van along the countryside and there were homes that barely had three walls standing and certainly no roofs. I wasn’t expecting Fiji to be this way. I thought it would be similar to Hawaii or even Thailand. South Africa is similar to Fiji but drastically different. For one, South Africa is gigantic and there are thousands of more people. During the day the streets are safe and lively. There is, however, always a clue around to remind you that this country is just breaking out of a very dark period.
These people have been through so much and continue to struggle with poverty, crime, and starvation. I’ve been to D.C., New York, San Francisco; there is crime there too - but it’s different here. I now have an entirely different prospective on poverty. When I was planning this trip I was so eager to get out of my perfect little bubble in Truckee. I wanted to be out of my comfort zone. I wanted to be exposed to a more “real” world. These travels have been amazing and at the same time exhausting. I have never considered myself patriotic, but I miss my country and I appreciate its vast land and human rights. In Cape Town I can’t go out on my own. There are spectacular mountains around that are full of trails for hiking and biking and hundreds of routes to rock climb. However, there is mugging, theft, and crime in the mountains and one has to be cautious and certainly not alone. I am not used to this at all. In fact, I’ve always lived in a place where it was not even necessary to lock the front door. Here there are metal bars on all of the windows, barbed wired fences, spiked gates and plenty of locked doors.
Those of you who know the true me know that I love solitude. I typically go into the mountains alone to clear my head and bring me back in touch with the natural world. When I return to the states I look forward to taking a walk under the stars by Donner Lake, or in the rolling hills of Sonoma, or in the autumn filled forests of the Shenandoah, or to the waterfalls in Big South Fork Kentucky, or in the cliff-filled crags of West Virginia, or in the rugged mountains of Telluride Colorado, or in the big Wyoming sky in the Grand Tetons, or in the abandon deserts of Joshua tree, or along the foggy beaches Northern California, or up granite the domes in Tuolumne Meadows. I look forward to taking a walk in the mountains in my own country where I feel safe and at peace.
Posted: 02.21.2007
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