THOUGHTS FOR THE JOURNEY

I have " logged" in journals and notebooks most of my walks and travels.
I have found that I have been drawn to a random collection of verses and quotes which I have recorded.

Placed at the front of of my journals they have seemed to give meaning to the journeys. These are but a few that I particularly like

" I am a part of all that I have met

yet all experience is an arch wherethro

gleams the untravelled world,

whose margin fades

For ever and ever when I move"

Alfred Lord Tennyson

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"To climb the great mountains is to leave the comfort of familiar places

and to challenge the very essence of oneself.

Perhaps there is no greater quest"

Peter Hillary( 20/5/96)

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' Life is an adventure or it is nothing'

Helen Keller

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'Not all those who wander are lost'

Tolkien

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'Whatever you can do

or dream you can

begin it'

Goethe

ITHACA

Ithaca

When you set out for Ithaka

ask that your way be long,

full of adventure, full of instruction.

The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,

angry Poseidon - do not fear them:

such as these you will never find

as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare

emotion touch your spirit and your body.

The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,

angry Poseidon - you will not meet them

unless you carry them in your soul,

unless your soul raise them up before you.

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Ask that your way be long.

At many a Summer dawn to enter

with what gratitude, what joy -

ports seen for the first time;

to stop at Phoenician trading centres,

and to buy good merchandise,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

and sensuous perfumes of every kind,

sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;

to visit many Egyptian cities,

to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

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Have Ithaka always in your mind.

Your arrival there is what you are destined for.

But don't in the least hurry the journey.

Better it last for years,

so that when you reach the island you are old,

rich with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.

Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She hasn't anything else to give you.

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And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.

So wise you have become, of such experience,

that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean.

Constantine P Cavafy

NEVER TRULY LOST

In his autobiography ,'Never Truly Lost', the Australian Twentieth Century bush adventurer and business man, Paddy Pallin commented on the random decisons which led him from England to Australia and altered the course of his life.

He quoted the Australian classic Such is Life by Tom Collins and I quote it here because it does say much about life decisions.

The misty expanse of futurity is radiated with divergent lines of rigid steel

and along one of those.....you travel...

at each junction you switch right or left and on you go........

the way of your own choosing.

But there is no stopping or turning back....

another junction flashes into sight, and again your choice is made...

One line may lead through the Slough of Despond

and the other across the Delectable mountains...

but you don't know till

the cloven mists of the future

melt into the manifest present

Tom Collins wrote this in 1903 ,and this reflection on life decisions is made shortly afterwards by the great American Poet Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.