Do you ever come by a book in pure happenstance and slowly read it just whenever you have the time only to discover that it has completely changed your outlook on something very near and dear to your heart? Every time I read an amazing book that touches my soul I tell Josh or another friend all about this book and immediately claim, "this book changed my life", which is dramatic I know, I get so caught up in the after-book-glow, but in reality, every great novel we read changes our lives a little. However, even though I am in the after glow of this amazing book, Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents by Elisabeth Eaves, I am confident in saying that this may just be my new favourite book I've ever read.
Simply put, it is about a woman (a quite feminist woman at that) who has an unquenched thirst for travel that brings her to Afghanistan, Australia, Vancouver, New York City, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Paris and a ridiculous amount of other countries. All over five continents basically. On her journeys she forms a string of friends, lovers, memories and stories to which all of us travel-addicts can somewhat relate. I don't want to go on about book itself, I'd rather you read it and love it, but I suggest you read it before you are about to travel somewhere, otherwise you might just be inspired to buy a plane ticket and explore a new country. I have been reading this book on and off in the last month and a half between the crazy haze of wedding week in Georgia, honeymoon travels in Costa Rica and eventually settling into New Zealand. Traveling between three countries, numerous airports, travel-related struggles, pulling my high school spanish out of my ass in Costa and embracing a new but familiar culture that is New Zealand has been the perfect setting to read this novel and perhaps that added to my love for it. Anyway, I want to share some of my favourite quotes with you from this book that inspired me.
"By leaving our safety net, we have thrown our souls upon the wind, exposing ourselves to all of the fears and dangers that we sought to protect each other from, and in doing so, we have made ourselves available to experience things that...border on the magical."
"Most good travel stories are about discovering the unexpected. The traveler goes abroad with an illusion, the illusion is shattered, but then she learns something new, and after assorted challenges and humiliations, she achieves a satisfying epiphany."
"My happiness was doubled by the knowledge that the physical world could bring on this kind of pleasure. It made me content to know that I could be moved by nature, independent of human relations. It was a one-way relationship, but beautifully simple."
Theoretically you can take on any old adventure at home, bungee jumping or spelunking or whatever. But you don't. The mind is primed by going away. Desire and appetite build and you feel like you can't miss a thing, because who knows when you're going to have just this chance again? Everything has to be tasted."
"I was watching myself. I imagined myself pulling on a new skin, stretching into it, wiggling my fingers toward the ends."
"In the postmodern world, to invert Robert Frost, home is the place where, when you have to go there, they don't have to take you in."
"You could adopt New Zealand and have it instantly be yours. You could shed off whatever skin you wore back home. You could make up a new self, maybe even shirk a debt or two. It was all temptingly easy. But then you would have cast a lot. You would have chosen a life far from the center."
"When you escape from something, you don't abscond into nothing -you escape from one place to another. The excitement is in the instant of deliverance itself, because that, not the final destination, is the only moment of being free. It's the moment of feeling most alive and most oneself, unburdened by the expectations on either side."
"I'm never bored by happily consumed."
"Travel is life-changing. That's the promise made by a thousand websites and magazines, by philosophers and writers down the ages. Mark Twain said it was fatal to prejudice, and Thomas Jefferson said it made you wise. Anais Nin observed that 'we travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.' It's all true."
About Me
- Sarah Drummond
- Timaru, New Zealand
- This photo/travel blog contains the accounts of my life as a photographer, world traveler, outdoor enthusiast, camp counselor, newlywed and star wars nerd. I am an American who grew up in Southeast Asia as an expat kid and have traveled to eighteen countries in my twenty-two years of life so far. I recently married a kiwi and have found myself to be an expat again, this time in the South Island of New Zealand. I dedicate this blog to the wanderlust that lives inside us all. May your lust for foreign soil and adventure thrive until your very last breath.
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