A Short Walk Through a Wide World

by Douglas Westerbeke

The more you move,” says Aubry, “the more available you are to chance and little wonders.”

And really, was there anything in Santiago or Havana or Madrid—any artwork or museum or towering mountain—he could not simply read about in a book? Did he really have to cram himself into a train or a boat for an interminable amount of time to see things that had already been photographed and painted and published for his pleasure a thousand times over?

This sums up my own feelings about traveling😬

Scholars may study, historians may research, readers may read, but nobody knows more about today, this very day, than the person who lives it.