Although traveling is not a career for me [I actually like my current one] It is something that is in the heart, something in the mind and very probably something in the blood.
I have always loved it, had a fascination with it. The places, the process – the planning, the getting there and enjoying the ‘being there’ … wherever there may be this time. And I have been lucky to have the opportunity to have been traveling all my life. Thanks to parents that had it a part of their lives, now I do the same for my kids.
Most of us probably start to get excited as they plan to travel. Where to go? Sometimes where “not” to go makes the choice for you, with the world doing it’s best to be wild and unruly. Oh wait that would be us humans making the world an unwelcoming place at times. But you can still travel into the wild of the world and have a peaceful yet full on adventure trip.
So where to go? Somewhere you have been and are comfortable with? Somewhere that stretches the imagination and knowledge or somewhere that has no boundaries or expectations, or somewhere where the ‘Wild Things Are’? (yeah I loved that book as a kid). It could be other countries, oceans and mountains, inner city or your cousin’s backyard…that is what traveling is all about. It doesn’t really matter, we travel for many reasons. And all of them are typically good reasons.
So why do I travel? for the sheer love of it, even if I go for work or other obligations, there is still something exciting, potentially unexpected, a heightened awareness of going somewhere – traveling!
The Valdez Ice Climbing Festival was an amazing thing to observe…fit, healthy men and women of all ages and experience, whom to me appeared to thrive on the adrenalin it takes to do this…climbed the many frozen waterfalls in the Keystone Canyon, the leads into the Alaskan town of Valdez. These waterfalls during summer are impressive in and of themselves, but when frozen they take on a totally new dimension that allows for photographers to train their skills in white balance, white/ gray sky, glaring white/blue ice 
and snow – not an easy task for this newer photographer.
There is something about snow that is quiet, silent, peaceful and beautiful. It falls softly here where I live and and some years pretty constantly during winter. You could go on about the amazing nature of it and how it is condensation of water vapor into an ice nucleus…but nah…its just the beauty itself when its underfoot, tickling your face or just a quiet presence outside that inspires me.
