One of my favourite stories about GK Chesterton, the prolific early 20th-century journalist, novelist, essayist and all-round larger-than-life personality, is the tale of when his friends came round to find him packing his trunk for a big trip.
"Where are you going?" they asked him.
"To London!" he exclaimed, to confused looks as they were at that moment standing in his London home. He went on to explain that he had been in London so long that he no longer saw it, he needed to travel to it again by way of many other places in order to see it anew.
We have not left Asia for over a year now. Asia is our home, we love it, but sometimes we don't really see it anymore. We forget those things that made our jaws drop and caused us to reach for our cameras. We no longer stop and wonder why people are doing some of those things that first seemed so odd to us.
As I write this we are cruising at an altitude of 8839 metres on an overnight flight to Auckland (there's no wi-fi on this flight, so we'll have landed by the time you see this). We're on our way to Asia, by way of New Zealand. A friend is getting married out there and it was a good reason to finally do a trip we'd had near the top of our list since we got married ourselves. We figure we'll swing by the wedding, climb a mountain or two and maybe visit some fjords on our way.
It's been a long time since we've turned off our "work" email and had a real vacation. We love our work and we love where we live, so it's easy for us to forget that sometimes we need to step away from what we do in order to remember why, and for Whom, we do it.
I can't promise how frequently we'll update this blog - all our good intentions haven't really resulted in a well-populated post list - but we'll be on the lookout for beauty everywhere we go. If New Zealand is still anything like it was when I was last there 15 years ago, we won't have to look too hard.
Evan
"Where are you going?" they asked him.
"To London!" he exclaimed, to confused looks as they were at that moment standing in his London home. He went on to explain that he had been in London so long that he no longer saw it, he needed to travel to it again by way of many other places in order to see it anew.
We have not left Asia for over a year now. Asia is our home, we love it, but sometimes we don't really see it anymore. We forget those things that made our jaws drop and caused us to reach for our cameras. We no longer stop and wonder why people are doing some of those things that first seemed so odd to us.
As I write this we are cruising at an altitude of 8839 metres on an overnight flight to Auckland (there's no wi-fi on this flight, so we'll have landed by the time you see this). We're on our way to Asia, by way of New Zealand. A friend is getting married out there and it was a good reason to finally do a trip we'd had near the top of our list since we got married ourselves. We figure we'll swing by the wedding, climb a mountain or two and maybe visit some fjords on our way.
It's been a long time since we've turned off our "work" email and had a real vacation. We love our work and we love where we live, so it's easy for us to forget that sometimes we need to step away from what we do in order to remember why, and for Whom, we do it.
I can't promise how frequently we'll update this blog - all our good intentions haven't really resulted in a well-populated post list - but we'll be on the lookout for beauty everywhere we go. If New Zealand is still anything like it was when I was last there 15 years ago, we won't have to look too hard.
Evan
