Vessels of Travel and their Routes
For many years, as in millenia, us humans have used vessels of differing shapes and sizes to get to other places, for various reasons. A lot of it has had to do with survival, while at times it is more exploratory in nature, which also can add up to contribute or detract from humanity's survival.
Many times the vessels and vehicles of us otherwise walkers and runners become an extended part of us, like a good horse or a good dog, or a good tool like a hoe or a rifle.
Our accoutrements become parts of us, even becoming a part of our affections and loyalties.
In the current modern age, the car and truck and occasional motorcycle or bicycle has done so. They are extensions of our characters and personalities.
The prototypical Inuit (antiquated term being "Eskimo") and his kayak is iconic in our collective conscience. So is the cowboy and his steed, as the pre-descending knight and vassal, or Mongol nomad warrior, or Muslim holy raider ...
Today many of us have our motor vehicles, and this is our identity as first worlders, to most.
Some of the 21st century inhabitants have boats. For most first worlders this is a luxury. Although to few in today's industrial "north", boats and ships are their lifestyle and necessity. There are second and third worlders that also use the water vessel to transport themselves and their passengers and goods to survive.
Famous voyages have been made throughout the annals of our written and unwritten history, or filmed and un-filmed history, our blogged and our un-blogged history.
We all have our stories. Some cross seas, others cross rivers, lakes ...We all have our voyages and vessels. Trade routes, commuting ways, explorational byways. Via land, where presumably most of us habitate, we have our own "ships", which are typically motorized.
Here on terra firma, we traverse the planet on radial tires and coursing axles.
Some of us enjoy passing through mountain passages, hills and plains, forests and swamps and beach runs with waves lapping and waterfalls looming in the distance off the shoulder.
I can honestly say that these have been pristine voyages for me. Mountains tower, forbode, elevate our spirits and captivate our imaginations. Farms and gulleys, creeks and glades, large expanses and crowded copses occupy our synapses and fill our dreams by dormant hours.
And then there is humanity, and what is left of it. People's detritus and flotsam and jetsam. Buildings, roads, lots, posts, shelters, paths, houses and wells and boxes or hovens, for ducks or bees. Schools, airfields, warehouses, barns, outhouses ... all things related to humans, that are "artificial", or constructed by "higher intelligence".
Urban, suburban, and even the rural agrarian landscapes... They are worthy of our adventures and thoughts. As much as the purely natural? Perhaps. It all can be dependent on the viewer.
This viewer takes lessons from the human leftovers, build-ups and constructs.
Some are farms. Some are bird habitats. Very nature-filled, but groomed or planned and organized by us upper lobal sentients.
There are buildings in and of themselves that deserve our scrutiny and wonder. And there are villages and towns, and dams and aqueducts...
Bridges, towers, other monstrous constructs. Art in representational forms, at a smaller scale showing us shades of reality.
Cities.
Cities are fascinating places, unique to themselves with their own bio-rhythms.
Have you ever taken your extension-of-yourself-vessel across a city?
I have. Chicago. New York. Los Angeles. A few others.
Santiago. Mexicali. Toronto.
What was it that made it like a first man crossing the vast wilderness?
We are the same as we always have been.
Always traveling, always searching, looking for the next place, the next space, the next venue to imagine.
And millions are there with us, like perhaps millions of years before.
Blog it, EMC.
