Travel

"The contemporary Western world, grappled to its explanations, sets itself to ignore the accidental quality of our existence," writes Shirley Hazzard in her book, "The Ancient Shore."

It seems to me that a sense of place is only gained through thinking about where you are, and then applying whatever you're thinking to what you're actually seeing.

I like to travel but travel is becoming more difficult as I age since traveling is for me a way of becoming so uncomfortable with what I'm seeing that I'm forced to see something else.

The question is: how much should you know about the place toward which you are traveling, a place you've never been before?

Is a travel experience enhanced by knowing almost everything about a place, or knowing next to nothing?

Yesterday I rode my bike to the top of Mt. Tamalpais. It was a beautiful day, I could see the coastline from San Francisco to Bolinas and Point Reyes, I spoke the language, I could read the road signs etc. etc. But I also felt I could have been anywhere in the world close to the ocean where the sun was shining, Sicily perhaps.