A Walk In The Woods...

It was just a normal morning when I browse my Facebook wall when a piece of memorabilia scrolls onto the screen. It was a photo taken from one of my online albums, World Backpacking 1 - on public view online. It's a small selection of film-based photos taken from the main physical album, titled, 1997 Travel Triathlon.

The album consists of four volumes covering Singapore, the Australian Pacific coast, and Southern California. Between them, there are 560 photos altogether, 140 pics in each volume. And those are the better quality pictures. There are more of them, rejects, often consisting of "sister photos" that is, two or more identical ones, out-of-focus snapshots or those of bad shading. They are all kept in safe storage elsewhere. In all, within the ten-week Round-the-World trip, I might have taken up to 600 photographs. The Facebook album has only 62 of the best pictures of the Australian coastline, including several taken underwater at the Great Barrier Reef.

At Low Isles, GBR, taken in 1997.

When the single underwater photo appeared unexpectedly on the laptop screen, my emotions rose, and I was consumed by a deep feeling of nostalgia. Linked to this feeling of nostalgia was my awareness of God's goodness in allowing me to see his creation firsthand, and furthermore, the availability of a cheap, single-use submersible camera which, back in 1997, was purchased for just AU$10 at a kiosk onboard the Cairns-Port Douglas catamaran.

At the same time, I was invited by a long-standing church friend of forty years, who is now in his seventies. He asked me if I would like to accompany him for a walk in the pine forest, just across the main road from where I live. During our walk, I would say, for the better part of an hour, our talk included our world travel tales.

He travelled further than I did, as his story included a working trip to South Africa and entry into New Zealand, the one pair of islands I couldn't reach on my 1997 RTW trip due to both insufficient funds and the shortage of time. His visit to Australia took in Perth, on the West Coast, Sydney, on the Pacific Coast, and the Great Barrier Reef of Queensland's glory. However, unlike me who travelled alone, his trip to Australia was with his wife to meet with one of his family members who, I believe, lives there permanently.

Like me, he too swam or snorkelled at the Reef, although at a different site from where I snorkelled. He wore a full wetsuit during his dive, as he admitted his awareness of the presence of "stingers." I knew that he was referring to the lethal and dreaded Box Jellyfish or Sea Wasp.

When I visited the Reef in 1997, it was in the weeks between late May and June, their "winter" - although the weather was certainly hot and dry. The Sea Wasp is, fortunately, a short-lived seasonal marine creature, spawning in November and dying around April, that is, during their summer. Therefore, unlike my friend who had to wear a full-body wetsuit, I was able to snorkel in just shorts and a shirt, the latter to lessen the chance of sunburn on my back as I checked out the corals directly beneath. The fact that I already knew of the stinger's demise was due to a study I made at a Cairns backpacker's hostel, where I was staying before moving on, before boarding the catamaran.

Although picture postcards of the Great Barrier Reef, along with books, magazines and television documentaries, always showing the submerged biosystem in bright colours and in crystal-clear waters, giving the impression of an underwater paradise. However, when I was there, the water was always slightly cloudy, hence my own photography doesn't quite match those from the pro's camera. And it was anything but an underwater paradise! At night, any coral polyps too close to their neighbour tend to fight over territory rights. Also at night, sharks can locate small fish hiding in rock crevices and pry them out. Other fish guard their territories whilst some preditors swarm the reef, looking for a meal. Other potential prey stays on constant guard or has developed incredible body defences. Meanwhile, the majority of both fertilized coral and fish eggs floating in the currents, along with their hatchlings, will eventually be eaten.

I have wondered what a coral reef might have looked like under a primaeval ocean surface before the Fall, assuming that, like all life on the planet, such a biosystem was created "with the appearance of age" - very much like Adam and Eve were, who looked to be in their mid-twenties or even in their early thirties to the observer, when in reality, they were only a few days old. Such a reef must have been a beautiful paradise, an incredible delight to the eye.

And for other natural beauty that I had seen with my own eyes, such powers of nature such as the trail winding through the rainforest - with its spectacular waterfalls- of the Blue Mountains National Park near Sydney, the sleeping crater of Mt Vesuvio, the active crater of Mt Etna, the thundering Niagara Falls, the Colorado River flowing through the majestic Grand Canyon, the Mangroves thriving in saltwater, a beautiful array of Traveller's Palms sprouting fan-like leaves, a mountain stream flowing from the Alps, the terrific display of stars with the Milky Way streaking across a clear tropical night sky...

 

Aso here in the United Kindom, I have always been enthralled at the Jurassic Coast Path, together with the mountainous landscapes of the Lake District National Park, and in Scotland, Loch Ness, and further north, the dramatic beauty of the vertical cliff walls of the narrow canyons, along with the sandstone stacks of Duncansby Head, all within easy reach of John O'Groats.

The lethal Box Jellyfish or Sea Wasp.

Indeed, it's through the mercy of God that after the Edenic Curse, God retained much of the natural beauty we see around us, allowing us to glorify our Creator and to thank Him for his goodness and mercy. Furthermore, I can't help but give thanks to my Redeemer for allowing me the pleasures of travel and the opportunities to see all these locations first-hand. Indeed, such was the privilege!

As such, that one Facebook picture opened wonderful memories.

While my friend and I carried on talking, it became apparent just where our focuses lay. He was more into political, cultural and current affairs both at home and overseas. He was also into the business world, as in his heyday, he ran two private enterprises. One was an agency to help young graduates find the right start in their professional careers. At the same time, he also opened The Good Book Shop, a retail outlet in the town centre specialising in Bibles and other Christian literature. 

By contrast, I am more into natural beauty and dynamism.

He was sharing with me his experience of life in apartheid South Africa before the days of Nelson Mandela and his ilk. The severance between white and non-white was so serious, that even the public conveniences had both exclusively white and non-white use, with separate entrances and rooms. He even described a footbridge crossing over a railway track. The bridge, so he tells me, had a dividing fence running along the middle. One lane was for the whites, the other for blacks.

 

The conversation had revealed such a beautiful world spoilt by the entry of sin, and the Curse, which not only turned vegetarians in the animal kingdom into carnivores but also brought in hate and division into human society, the division between races which not only blighted the history of the Deep South of the New World with negro slavery but also resulted in Apartheid in South Africa - a shocking spectacle which my friend saw and experienced first hand.

And the worst thing was - that both groups believed that both slavery and social segregation were ordained by God. Indeed, the atonement made by Jesus Christ on the cross was robbed of all its potential. For the Cross not only had slain the old man but had reconciled the new man to God and to each other, so Paul was able to write:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28.

Therefore, when my friend testified about an all-white church youth group excluding all coloured people. This came as a shocking surprise to hear about. This is what I don't understand: How could a church - any church - profess to acknowledge the truth of the Bible and yet exclude by force anyone whose skin colour isn't approved?

As I read in an article in yesterday's Daily Mail online, Janet Street-Porter writes that the joys of travel seemed to have vanished with this Covid pandemic. She believes that the old bulldog spirit had evaporated and the nation had turned cowardly, with most of us too scared to leave our homes.

No other article had received such a huge number of hostile comments in the forum beneath it!

Perhaps they were all correct in their hostility. If I had my way, I'll be heading for the airport tomorrow. But as one married to my beloved who is partially disabled and in need of a wheelchair - plus - the rules for wearing masks, the need to take a Covid test, maybe more than one test, the need to quarantine at a hotel, long, stationary queues at border control - NO THANK YOU! Yes, the joys of travel have evaporated - but this, to me, didn't start with the pandemic.

It began nearly twenty years earlier.

In 2001, actually. In this case, Tuesday, September 11th. It's better known as the 9/11 attack. I remember that day. Alex and our baby daughter were at home. I was out on my job cleaning windows. Then my attention was turned to the customer whose windows I was cleaning. I watched on the news the World Trade Center in New York City - the roof of one of its towers that I stood upon in 1978, admiring the panorama of the city with the Empire State Building at the opposite end - was going up in a black column of smoke. The tower then went down in a mountainous pile of smoke, dust and rubble. The very building I stood on almost exactly 23 years earlier! 

The 9/11 Disaster.

It's my belief that it was this which changed the joys of travel forever. For example, before 9/11, I was able to head for the airport, check-in, board the 'plane and fly across the Atlantic whenever I felt inclined, thanks to the Visa Waiver Scheme agreed by our PM Margaret Thatcher and then-President Ronald Reagan. Travelling to the States was as easy as taking a ferry to France, and I took full advantage. But now, if I want to fly to the USA, I would need to get an ESTA document (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation) something not much different from the old tourist visa of the 1970's nightmare of vigorous form-filling and bureaucracy.

Maybe, you can ask yourself: Supposing you were at the departure gate, waiting to board your flight. You look around among all the other passengers who will be on your 'plane. You then spot two Arabic-looking young men with their hoods up, whispering to each other. They too will be on your flight. How would you feel? Nothing more than a passing coincidence? Or would you feel your hair stand on end in terror? Would you stay quiet? Or would you inform the flight attendant that you don't feel at all comfortable sharing your flight with these men?

Yes, I think I know what I would do. Inform the flight assistant to have these men removed. If not, then for them to go through a thorough security check. And that includes stripping down to a thorough body search. And have their luggage in the hold checked, if not removed entirely.

Indeed, the joys of travel had changed. But not by the pandemic. 

Yet, I thank the Lord for allowing me the wonderful privilege to travel when the times were good. Now, I can sit back and enjoy virtual travel on YouTube, having experienced the reality of the real thing.

World Travel - How I Loved It!

Last week, after completing and publishing my last blog, Science Plus Faith - A Potential Mix, my wife and I went to my elderly parent's home to spend the rest of the day. With us was my brother and his two daughters, my nieces. I was talking to the younger one, and asked her if she still reads my blogs. Her reply was that the constant theme on religion bores her, and then suggested a blog about my travels.

The idea of having two separate pages on this site, the other dedicated to secular issues such as Travel had crossed my mind before now. But having last travelled (in the proper sense of the word) in 1998, which was to New York and Boston Massachusetts, I don't believe I can supply sufficient material to feed such a page, therefore I'll include the subject of Travel within this page. Not that this is the first time either. On the 29th April 2011, I wrote Vagabond, where I described some ins and outs about solo backpacking. Also in 2011, I wrote three other blogs - Hiking - Stress-Free Travel (23rd Jan), A Stone Bible (1st Feb) and Jerusalem - Peace To You (13th Feb). All of these blogs touched on my experience as a backpacker. However, I feel it's okay to write about one of my favourite activities here, because I have never separated travelling from faith in God, as the two are intrinsically linked.

So where do I begin? Perhaps from my schooldays in the mid to late 1960s when Dad used to drive our car to Torino in northern Italy from our home near London to spend three weeks with our maternal grandparents, or Nonni. As the crow flies, the distance covered was in the region of 600 miles, 970 km. but the car journey must have been closer to 1,000 miles 1620 km. which was completed in three days. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey itself. It was after arriving at the home of Nonni that boredom began to set in. The main reason for this onset of boredom was the language barrier - neither gran were able to speak English and I couldn't speak or understand Italian, together with the fact that Torino is an inland city with a large industrial complex, the car makers Fiat Mirafiori, where Nonno used to work during his younger days. However, on one of these holidays, just Dad and I set off to Rome to stay with my Aunt, Dad's older sister who spoke some English. Thanks to the superb motorway (or Freeway) system, the Autostrada del Solo connecting Milan to Rome made the 300 mile 486 km. journey complete in a day.

It was in 1972 that I enjoyed our first package holiday in Spain without my parents. Instead I shared the experience with my college mate Andrew, giving us both a taste of foreign independence. As a nineteen year old, this was also my first time ever inside an aeroplane, of the now non-existent airline Dan Air. From London Gatwick Airport the two hour flight to Girona, close to the Costa Brava, made such an exhilarating experience. This was because Dad felt averse to flying and loved his steering wheel, putting him in full control of the vehicle. I believe this had set the pace to my own travels as I grew older - backpacking, together with the sights of Rome, including the Colosseum and the Circa Maxima had also put into my being the desire to travel.

Colosseum of Roma


That what I call backpacking, which is simply travelling from one destination to another as opposed to the package holiday (or vacation) like the one in Spain, where we spent the entire break at a single hotel. For me, backpacking involved hosteling, staying at a hostel where I slept in a shared dormitory and buying and cooking my own meals, in itself a threefold blessing - enhancing independence, making friends and doing wonders to the budget. My experience at a hostel range from just one night to that of 27 nights, as was the case with the New Swedish Hostel, Jerusalem, in 1994. In between, I have spent many "single nighters" including those in the UK when I, along with my mate Gareth, cycled from one end of the entire UK to the other in 1990.

As a single person (I didn't marry until 1999) there was ample time to travel. This was one of the great advantage of being self-employed. It meant that during the 1990s, I worked hard, saved hard and travelled extensively, closing the business and taking "sabbaticals" - long holidays - covering four principal destinations outside the Mediterranean: North America, Middle East, Singapore and Australia.

My first of five transatlantic flights to North America was in 1977, which included the Greyhound Bus journey across Canada, taking in the whole of the Trans-Canadian Highway from Vancouver to Toronto, spending a few days at Calgary and Winnipeg, as well as standing by the magnificent Niagara Falls. The other four transatlantic trips were in 1978, 1995, 1997 and 1998. During both the 1978 and 1995 trips, I found myself hiking the Bright Angel Trail of the Grand Canyon. Spending the night at the bottom of the Canyon, next to where the Bright Angel Creek flows to join the Colorado River and gazing at the countless stars in the night sky was so exhilarating - and so surprising too, as the night sky had never appeared like this over the UK. And how I loved San Diego with its Zoo, Sea World, Balboa Park with all the museums, the Old Town with its Old West feel, and Mission Beach. Little further north is the resort of La Jolla, with its caves and to the south, the city of Tijuana over the Mexican border. Thus, San Diego to me was one of America's most intriguing stops.

At the Grand Canyon in 1995.

Travelling across the North American continent, I used the Greyhound Bus Ameripass ticket, sold only to foreign visitors. The one I carried was valid for a month, and with it I had unlimited access to every corner of the United States. As for hostels, as described in my blog, Vagabond, there were good hostels as well as not so good. But in every one, I always bought and cooked my own meals, socialised and slept in a dormitory, normally single-sex. In the States, the average stay was about three days before boarding the bus for the next leg of the journey. However in San Diego I stayed for five days in 1995, ten days in 1997. During my first of the two visits, the hostel was at a building shared with the YMCA, and its kitchen was accessible 24 hours a day, making this the very best hostel I ever stayed at. By the time I called back two years later, it had moved to a new building at Market Street, and had introduced a kitchen night curfew, normal in most other hostels.

Australia was very similar to the USA where travel was concerned. Here too I had a Greyhound Bus pass ticket, also valid for a month but restricted to the Pacific Highway, from Cairns in North Queensland to Sydney. The hostels I stayed at in Australia were very much the same as in the USA, with Sydney City Hostel, across the road from the terminal station, having two large kitchens and a grand dining room, and also a rooftop sauna suite. On the places to see, two main highlights in Australia I had found exhilarating: The Great Barrier Reef and Blue Mountains National Park. It was at Green Island, just off Cairns, where I learned to snorkel for the first time in my life. The sea surrounding Low Isles, off Port Douglas, was deeper, making the coral there more richer and greater in size and depth. Likewise at Heron Island, one of the Whitsundays, I was able to identify the famous Brain Coral while I was snorkeling there. At the Blue Mountains NP, the dense forest of eucalyptus trees emit a blue haze which hovers over the valley, hence the name. Various waterfalls cascading down the deep, cliffed valley brought out the sheer delight.

Sydney Harbour in 1997

Blue Mountains N.P. 1997.

Where around the world it was both nature as well as good planning which lifted my spirits in admiration, in Israel it was history, particularly connected with the life of Jesus Christ. But even here, at Eilat, coral grows at the Red Sea, a finger of the Indian Ocean protruding well into the Middle East region. This was the one holiday where Alex and I did some backpacking in the year 2000 as a couple. Jerusalem had always been extra special to me. This was the city God had chosen to put his name there, all the ancient kings from David onwards reigned from this city, and it was where Jesus was crucified, died, buried and Resurrected. As such, Jerusalem for me is the most important destination of all the places visited worldwide.

Jerusalem 1994.

What I have found in being a lone backpacker was that on two separate occasions I was referred to as brave. The first was back in 1978 when I was still an employee at British Aerospace, when a fellow employee called me that, after spotting me in New Orleans while he was also travelling, but with a companion. The second occasion was on a flight from London to New York in 1995, by an air hostess, while I was explaining to her about the freedom of U.S. travel using the Greyhound Ameripass. I had never considered myself brave, this was reserved for soldiers out fighting, firemen rescuing victims from a blazing building, or any dangerous task undergone to save a life or change circumstances. But to tell the truth, while sitting in the 'plane for Toronto in 1977 and to New York a year later, to calm my apprehensions, I spent time in prayer, asking God to protect me from all evil whilst abroad. On both occasions, in privacy during the in-flight meal, I took bread, broke it and declared it the Body of Christ. Then I took the glass of wine I had, and declared that as the Blood of Christ and drank that. It was literally a self-made Holy Communion. The Catholic Church might have condemned me to Hell for taking the Holy Sacrament without authority, but all I felt was the peace, protection and pleasure of God in my life.

Travel has been a demonstration of God's love and grace in my life. Sure enough, there are times, especially in the winter, when I feel that I'm at the low end of the scale - poorly educated at school, condemned to a life of manual labour, working in the cold and damp, watching university grads fulfill much richer and meaningful lives, and of one case in my church, having someone with a university education practically boasting of his third trip to Uganda this year alone. But I have come to learn that God loves everyone, especially believers, whose eternal inheritance will outshine even the very best of travel experience.

"Whoever comes to me," Jesus once cried out, "out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
Travel is just another option with a return ticket. By contrast, salvation will never end.