“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”
― Hunter S. Thompson
I spent my first two-and-a-half decades sailing, safely, piloting small craft around harbors and coves and creeks and occasionally venturing out onto the usually docile Long Island Sound in my family’s 26-foot sloop, Weepecket, and various 35-footers.
But I also sailed to Bermuda and back. On that voyage, we braved two days of very high winds and brutal seas while crossing the Gulf stream — one day in each direction.
I like to think that qualifies me for at least some experience braving Thompson’s “storm of life” at sea.
Those of you who know me best know my life has also been full of metaphorical storms, encountered on land. I believe I have braved those, too — some of them more gracefully than others.
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore,” wrote the French novelist André Gide.
I’m now navigating a new ocean, losing sight of the familiar Atlantic shore, traveling out of the shelter of east of the Hudson, where I have spent much of my life. I’ll be headed for such places as Mount Rushmore, The Badlands, Yellowstone, Hoover Dam, Rocky Mountain National Park, the Bonneville Salt Flats, Portland, Oregon, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, the tiny Kaweah Post Office near Three Rivers, California — and many other ports-of-call in my new ocean.
I’ll also be looking to meet people where I go: characters I can photograph and write about — their lives, their personalities, their accomplishments, their desires and plans.
I have the time and I have the desire and I have the platform: my in-progress van that by early September will have an electrical system to keep my computer and cameras charged up and working. It will also be able to power the 13” color printer I will have with me to make prints and greeting cards from my photos — to sell, to give as gifts, or to collect as souvenirs from an epic journey I had only dreamed of until now.
