Heart of an Explorer
living simply around the world
From the earliest age, I have always had an incurable case of wanderlust and something calling me out into the greater world to explore. It all began as a little boy when my mom would read me “Henry the Explorer” by Mark Taylor.
The colorful book was about a young boy named Henry and his faithful dog, Angus McAngus. Each morning, Henry would prepare a lunch, pack his backpack, and head out into the world, exploring with Angus. Every few steps he would put a flag into the ground to ensure his way home. One day, it got very late and very dark in the forest and Henry was lost. His mom was worried and the police came. It was into the night. Finally, Henry found his way home and the story had a happy ending. Each night I would beg my mom to read this story over and over before bed.
Years later, I have always found this story to be a metaphor for my travels.
As John Steinbeck wrote in the first pages of Travels With Charley…
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured hat greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don’t improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teen-agers in new hatched sin, will not think that they invented it.
Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; not two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blow-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only when do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand.”
I have now traveled to 14 countries and over the years a handful of themes and spiritual truths about the underlying nature of the world have emerged. My earliest adventures began at age 17 and took me to California, Hawaii, Asia, Europe, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
These earliest experiences ignited an internal journey that has never left me, a quest to live outside the norm of our hectic consumer culture and has taken me on epic adventures to China, Hong Kong, Costa Rica, South Korea, Japan, culminating in a year of mindful living in solitude in a tiny Japanese house in Kyoto.
I now write these words from a simple cabin on top of a mountain surrounded by nature in Boquete, Panama where I live surrounded by the indigenous people of the Chiriqui Valley. I live simply, grow and process my own coffee, and I write.
This whisper of the soul has always been further fueled by a longing for a much more simple and peaceful way of living in this modern world, a path which treads quietly and leaves a small, peaceful footprint.
On these pages, I share my observations of kindness and beauty from my adventures in the world and invite you to listen quietly for the call within you to explore the places that beckon your soul.
Thank you for reading and joining the journey,
Kirk
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. -Tao Te Ching
Zen and Ink Journals represents hundreds of hours of writing over the past decade, sometimes from a train in remote China or a coffee shop in Kyoto, a hammock in Costa Rica or a simple cabin on a mountaintop in Boquete, Panama.
As a free subscriber, you will recieve all free periodic articles which are shared publicly at no charge.
On these pages, I share my observations of kindness and beauty from my adventures in the world and invite you to listen quietly for the call within you to explore the places that beckon your soul.
If you would like to become a regular subscriber, please consider foregoing the cost of one cup of coffee and a pastry each month ($8) and becoming a monthly subscriber.
By becoming a founding member ($100 annually) your generous subscription helps support the journey and ensures more travel articles and insights in the future.
If you prefer a one-time donation you can do so via the founding member button and input the amount you would like.
Please know your monthly gift carries a ripple effect into the greater world and encourages my nomadic journey and also allows me to be generous with others in less modernized parts of the world.
Why subscribe?
A monthly subscription gives you access to the full archive of articles and allows you to join the journey each month for a glimpse into my travel journeys and reflections on the the larger world, as well as observations and reflections on living more simply and quietly as a nomad amidst the chaos of our modern world.
As a regular subscriber you will also receive access to more than a hundred articles on my adventures to China, my year living in Japan, S.Korea and Central America. Subscribers also receive access to my more personal writings and poetry.
Zen and Ink Journals is a simple offering of words in the hope of inspiring others to a simpler, more mindful way of life in these chaotic times.
I invite you join me each month on the journey and thank you for reading,
In gratitude,
Kirk
If you would like to stop receiving emails from Zen and Ink Journals simply click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of this email.