The Voice of Travel: "The Nothing Book" & The Appalachian Trail

Some genius decided to produce a set of books called "The Nothing Book;" they were hardbound books with empty pages. My first one was all blank white pages and I filled it up with the musings of a 14 year old in love with all things nature. It was the 70s and I was a full blown flower child. My second nothing book had pages of the soft pastels of the rainbow. This one made it though a portion of the Appalachian Trail with campers from South Carolina's Bonnie Doone Plantation.

The Appalachian Trail trip was my first real trip away from home and family. It filled me with wonder and joy. We hiked approximately 30 miles over a period of a week but we experienced the vast array of wet sleeping bags, soggy meals, wet socks and the laughter that comes from a group of teenagers too tired to do anything else but plod ahead and giggle. I formed new friendships, learned to live on trail mix they called "gorp," and thankfully no bears were prowling around our campsite looking for my secret stash of honey.

I kept a diary of our days on the trail in one of my "Nothing Books," so one of my earliest voices of inspiration was the voice of travel. This trip was my first real life "Adventure." Notes taken along the Appalachian trail and on subsequent travels with this same group became a starting point for my own early writings. During this time I was introduced to those who wrote about the trail, and through camp counselors I heard other stories that began to pique my interest in more spiritual things.

Written words became constant companions as schools introduced me to small paperback books ordered through "Scholastic Book Club." I loved filling out the tiny order forms and waiting for the books to arrive. I actually still have a few of these paperbacks. The early thrill of getting lost in a story has stayed with me.

The early "voice of travel" was not loud or even that passionate but it planted a seed deep within my heart that would eventually grow and blossom into a full throated cry for adventure. As John Steinbeck duly noted in Travels with Charley

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was upon me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight, perhaps senility will do the job." (Travels with Charley, Steinbeck, July 1962)

Looking back I had no idea how that simple hike throught the Nantahala Region of the Applachians would set a course in my life - but it did. The following year I visited a poverty stricken region of the hills of Kentucky, the next year we went to Mexico City where I fell in love with the people and the land and did not want to return home. It would be several years before travel would become a more regular and wider part of my life, but the dye was cast. I would always be drawn to distant lands and horizons.

There are places that my heart craves; there are places my mind wants to explore, but the intrigue in the venturing out, is only equaled to the peace and comfort of coming home.

With Joy in this Journey.