Motif Monday (by mrtl): TRAVEL

Ah... to travel. The promise of shimmering shorelines, lazy mornings, high-thrill adventures, low-stress living. The lure of it is like gravity -- irresistable, omnipresent, invisible yet compelling.

As a child, my experience with travel was comprised mainly of frantic, gruelling journeys in the family car -- pulling a travel trailer and often a boat behind that -- as far as we could get from Denver and still return in 2 weeks. Every year a different direction, each trip a destination in itself. Occasionally we'd have need to fly, like on my 10th birthday when we adventured to Oahu and by doing so, extended the celebration to a 28-hour day. Big stuff when you're that age apparently, for I remember it still.

The vacation pattern in my family permitted me to "bag" all but one of the 50 states as a child. Alaska had to wait until later, but Mr. E and I spent 10 days there over our 2nd Anniversary and it was enchanted.

Still, I never had a passport until 2004. Then, in Feb. '05, we travelled with friends to Nicaragua. I can't describe it because the experience was so far beyond words. I long to visit the land down-under and it's neighbor, New Zealand; the United Kingdom and the "Old Countries" on the continent; India, Africa, and Thailand; Ecuador; the world is so large and diverse and I yearn to see it all. But...

There are children in the world dying for lack of basic physical necessities, far too many of them now within my own country. How to justify "saving" for liesure travel when the American Red Cross lacks sufficient water to slake the current thirst? So, my wanderlust will wait. But not, I hope, forever.