So I was sitting with my travel agent, Leilani Burns of Susan Parr Travel in Port Angeles, to set up the trip to Iceland about which you just read. I casually mentioned that someday I’d like to go around the world before I go into a nursing home. One brief mention. She jumped on it like a Cossack on his horse and sent me around-the-world cruise lit.
No, I do not want to go around the world, at least not that way. I love birds and geology and the natural world God made and hold scant interest in cities. Around-the-world cruises go to cities. So she set me up with: a cruise on Cunard all the way around South America; a journey via Ama Waterway Tours up the Zambezi River in Africa with side trips to Victoria Falls and Kilimanjaro; a week in Australia; then a cruise on Seabourn up through Oceania to Hawai’i and home. A colleague calls it Darwinesque, and so it is.
But not just like Darwin, thank goodness. He was on a voyage lasting two years; I will travel for five months. He picked up some nasty diseases on his way that plagued him for the rest of his life; knowing something about them and their vectors, I hope to avoid that. He was young and strong and traveled overland extensively, on horseback over the Andes, for example; I am eighty years old and must pace myself very carefully. I learned that in Iceland.
Once he returned, Darwin never left England again. His theories and insights—many more of them than just his work on evolution—all came from his estate, his cote, his quiet garden, and the specimens he brought back. His insights and his improved and expanded understanding of our world, that I covet.
Today, unlike in Darwin’s day, you can transmit ideas instantly to, well, to the whole world. My friends and family urge me to do so. Of course these days it’s called blogging. The trip to Iceland provided the perfect beginner’s blog upon which to practice. Here we go with the real McCoy.