WanderingWhy…

When I was little I thought a summer trip to Florida to visit my grandparents was an amazing adventure.  It was at the time, and I’m thankful for all those memories now that I am older.  Sitting here thinking a bit about the last 18 months of adventure, I was pondering when I caught the travel bug that started it all.

I think my love of travel was unknowingly planted and nurtured by my Grandfather.  A child of the Depression, I’m sure he never imagined he would get to see the world beyond the United States.  Applying for the U.S. Marines as a young man and the United States later joining in a little thing called WWII changed that.  Not the most ideal of conditions to travel, but my Grandfather is the eternal optimist.

A charismatic storyteller, he has shared countless hours of interesting tidbits and observations of his travels .  No, the stories are not always different but each time they were told they were somehow new and interesting. I cherished those tales then and still do now.

He spent years fighting against the Japanese in the jungles of the South Pacific Islands (should I tell him Japan was one of my favorite countries?)  And yes, he has seen and told of horrible suffering, starvation, death, and loss.  But his stories are more apt to be about the positive or funnier side of things: A pet wallaby in a sick bay camp in Australia, a bier-meister in Samoa who preferred their canned beer to his own local brew and loved to trade,  falling asleep on a beach in Guadalcanal only to wake up and learn he had slept through a shelling, or accidentally blowing up the outhouse in camp.

I’ve sat and listened to first hand accounts of tales of tribesman from the Pacific Islands, land and sea battles of Guadalcanal, and the sheer beauty and tranquility of the Samoan Islands.  For anyone that has traveled to Papua New Guinea and find it isolated and exotic, one can only imagine what it was like 65 years ago.

While these may have been the most difficult years of my Grandfather’s life, I’ve little doubt they were also the best.  Living simply out of a bag and seeing the world for a time can give you experiences and memories worth more than any amount of money.  Gramps is now 88 years old and still talks fondly of these years all the time.

Thankfully, I was able to travel with my Grandfather back to the locations of some of these stories a few years ago.   To finally see these places after a lifetime of stories about them was indescribable. I know how much fun it is to show someone a place you love and I think we both created some new memories traveling to these places together. Pictures from the trip can be found here and here if you are interested.

I now realize that like most people I’ve lived my life with the expectation that I will grow old.  The truth is, there is no guarantee of longevity for any of us.  If I’m as fortunate as my Grandfather, I’ll get to grow old and look back on a life that was well lived.  But if not, I still want to look back on a life well lived and I’m glad my time away has taught me this.

Now in his twilight years, I don’t know if my Grandfather truly understands what we have been up to the last 500 or so days–but I still want to thank him for sharing his adventures so that I could find the courage to go out and create my own.  It is a gift I will always cherish.

Bookmark To: