Places of the Mind

Geography - endlessly flat, dwarfing, towering beyond sight, wave washed, beautiful from a distance--blistering from a footstep, emerald, terracotta, alabaster, sage, azure, granite;

Senses - ebbed and flowed, the push of soft air leading the deluge of monsoon, scent of grass basket fields, sting of spice markets, icy wind from the bow, sweet humid humus, the look in a whale's eye;

and Light - warm in it, awash in it, coloured by it, persuaded and seduced by it.

...why I travel.

Travel, like travel writing, is a self-indulgent-immersion. I have four books that have companioned my indulgent perambulations over the years, in some cases inspiring others: Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen, Arctic Dreams, by Barry Lopez, Song of the Dodo, by David Quammen, Crystal Desert, by David Campbell. But one of the most eccentric of its practitioners, cum addicts was Robert Byron who set out in 1933 on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana - the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. His arrival at his destination, was the legendary tower of Qabus. He chronicled this indulgence in The Road to Oxiana. Travel writer Bruce Chatwin has described the book as "a sacred text, beyond criticism," and carried his copy "spineless and floodstained" on four journeys through Central Asia.

The map of this journey is from what is called the 'inter-war years' - those are words that describe much more than a reference of years, they define, they demarcate, they turn the page on a world that will never again be - and like all times there are better and worse. Places like Persia, Ottoman Empire, Indo-china, Oxiana and others, lingering vestiges of colony - India, East Africa, German-Belgian Congo. After WWII the dusty roads were hastily paved, there was fear in foreign, urgency without understanding, the world shrank as quickly as double-right clicking Google Earth.

My first map was a paper sheet, not a digitally disconnected earth, (amazingly wonderful as GE is), one I could have crawled beneath and slept, and did in my mind. Folded and unfolded beyond its intent, its creases and worn edges clung to dreams, adventures and escapes. I clung to it as if it were a guide to my imagiNation. Even then I was traveling into self-indulgent-immersion.

In the mid 1990's I had just returned from what would be my last trip to Rwanda photographing mountain gorillas, a genocide had just been released on the people like a plague beyond our imagination and what Christiane Amanpour could report. For me Rwanda was multiple visits, it had become a place of my mind, not a mille colline landscape squeezed within the inky squiggles determined by the Belgians/UN in 1960, it was, as Byron penned, a place that "henceforth it exists on the map of our [my] intelligence as well as our atlases." It was the Rukashaza family teaching me about local pili pili, dark chocolate bars melting in equatorial sun, eucalyptus wood fires cooking rice, one cent avocados, four hour journeys into the Virungas, sweaty day-long gorilla treks, and night-time gauntlet runs to the buffalo guarded outhouse. Geogrpahy, senses, light, places of my mind. In the wake of our evening's conversation Barb shared with me Byron's words from First Russia, Then Tibet.

"Tibet, for us now, is no longer the land of mystery; a piece of dark brown on physical maps, gripped by an unholy hierarchy, and possessing no amenities of life beyond devil-dances and butter statues; but a physical, aesthetic and human definition as implied by the words France or Germany. Henceforth it exists on the map of our intelligence as well as of our atlases. If, say the newspapers, this or that is happening in Tibet, this or that means something. In Tierra del Fuego it does not. This or that moreover is invested with a particular romance. We see again the parched distances, the damson hills and gilded rocks, the encroaching snows, the yaks plowing the pale dusty earth of valleys, the threshers singing on the outskirts of the four square farmhouses, the laugh of the passer-by, the burning turquoise sky, and the pop-eyed clouds. We have a part in the country. We wish it well."

Yes, Henceforth it exists on the map of our intelligence as well as of our atlases. In my journals and field notebooks I make maps, places small and large, flower markets and labyrinth waterways, like personal address note taking, with contour lines of pondering, persuading future steps to the left or to the right. I might add those atlases Byron speaks of are not digital, but paper, rich with creases and tattered corners, faded from stare. They are ragged-eared reminders, sticky-notes to self-indulgence-immersion.

I've written that my recent travels in India were the first, after four initial encounters. It took a while, I don't know why; the mind wasn't full of places. India has now become a place of the mind. Daily it lives in people, thoughts, news, emails, food, book titles, cricket scores, writings, reviewed photographs. It connects to other places of the mind, an elaborate mental metro where journeys come and go. Two Kashmerie brothers met on floor in a Guwahati apartment have become a journey, my Tibet to know.

I envy Edward Abbey, Thoreau, Bryson for finding travel within their own domain. I have searched and the roads deadend. Even when I lived oversea perpetually for a many years the fascination remained in the foreign, only for a fleeting few days in the latter half of October did I glance skyward and wish to see Vs and voices passing southward, a reminder of home other than the road under foot.

I ran away when I was six, not because, but because. There was a road, it led, to a journey, some imagiNation, so I took off, in much the way I have traveled since, with curiosity and senses tilted forward - much to my mother's horror, although all journeys since have been to her horror as well - to this day I recall vividly those Places of the Mind collected up that sunny Saturday morning.


Photo above - a place for the senses: Kolkata flower market