Poetry on the Road…
A strange thing happened to me recently. I was cleaning up the Desktop on my computer, & came across a long-unused folder. When I opened it: I discovered the audio for my first-ever podcast episode, which was created right before I embarked on a six-month South America trip. Fascinated, I started listening. And I can’t tell you how strange it was to hear “Old Me” talking about her excitement & nerves for this upcoming trip. It was a bit like reading an old journal entry: you recognize yourself….but then again, you also seem like a totally different person.
Has this ever happened to you?
The author in South America.
Finding the “Old You…”
Maybe you’ve stumbled across an old college diary.
Or even better: the diary from when you were in grade school!
These unexpected “blasts from the past” can be illuminating. They’re often very funny, possibly a little pretentious, or even a little frightening!
Why Writing Can be Like Time Travel…
But back to this podcast episode. In it, I read from a collection of works that helped inspired me to travel. From the words of Thoreau, to an inspiring passage by Oprah Winfrey….to a magical excerpt from “The Secret Garden:” in re-listening to this collection of words, spoken by *former* me ~ it was kind of like one of those weird “time-space” moments.
Future me, listening to younger, oh-so-excited me.
Very trippy!
In doing so, I felt totally transported, & reconnected to why I even wanted to travel in the first place. It brought me back to that crucial moment in time: when I was at a definite “fork in the road.”
I could take the “Easier, Safer” path. Or I could take the more “Unknown, Scarier” path.
Robert Frost poignantly calls it, “The road less traveled by.”
The road less traveled by…in Argentina.
Feeling a Calling
In being transported back in time: I distinctly remember how it felt to hear that inner, underlying calling.
A call to the wild, if you will.
A call to do something different than I was currently doing. To the leave the business I’d created with a friend ~ in search of new adventures. To leave the safety net of friends I’d made in Portland…though many of them would later join me on my travels.
Who among us has not, at one time or another, come to a major fork in the road in their own life?
Finding Comfort in Times of Loneliness
And so, I was inspired to upload this little podcast episode to an actual service, so that people could actually listen to it. Particularly if you’re a woman (or man) alone on the road, perhaps in a time of loneliness. In the simple act of listening to all these different quotes: I not only felt re-inspired, & re-connected to my original reason for traveling ~ I felt comforted, somehow.
Like coming back to the words of a book you love: there is much comfort in that.
Because the truth is with travel: there will be places that you’ll absolutely fall in love with, like how I felt in Cusco, Peru. But there will also be places you visit where you simply don’t connect, or don’t meet the right people.
And that can feel very isolating.
I left Mendoza, Argentina (a place where I didn’t feel connected), for Iguazu Falls: which was like something straight out of a Dr. Seuss book…absolutely incredible.
Girl Who Travels the World Podcast Episode
And so, I invite you to listen to this little podcast episode, wherever you may be in the world, in the spirit with which it was made: with a sense of great adventures lying ahead…
Poetry on the Road…
Some of the quotes & excerpts from this podcast episode still give me chills….to this day.
Which I think speaks to the eternal power of both truth, and good writing.
And if you’re curious about some of the reading selections in it: Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ work, “Women Who Run with the Wolves” I found just astounding. Her work is brimming with both wisdom and warmth; I just love it. And Frances Mayes, who’s most famous for “Under the Tuscan Sun,” actually wrote a different book that I really connected with, called “A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller.”
All of this is valuable reading for a woman who is about to embark upon an adventure, or who perhaps is simply at one of life’s many crossroads.
xoxo Noelia
