Until We Meet Again

Dear Readers,

It has been a long time since I’ve last posted and not without reason.  There are countless blogs which documents the inner workings of their authors, that give you a brief peak inside the soul of another to let you see all the beauty and horror that is a human, but this is not one of those blogs.  I set out to create a blog that would inspire, bringing joy and beauty to those who stumbled upon my little out of the way place.  For that reason I have always spared you that inner turmoil that has been as important an element of my life, as it is a part of nearly every other.

And I will spare you that turmoil here as well!  Let it suffice to say that the last year has been an intense one.  I have both lost and gained much.  Yet for you, my audience, the thing of most relevance is that I have lost the desire to blog.  I thought it might be a temporary thing, some symptom of discontent or malaise that would soon pass.  I know now that it is much more.

No, my travels have not reached their end.  Today I board a plane for East Asia with a one way ticket.  It may be the last stop in my journey, or it may only be the next of many more to follow.  Whatever the case may be, it will be very different for I no longer go out looking for another adventure, but rather to find a place to rest my head and call home.  It will be a different kind of journey and one I have decided I’d rather make privately.

I won’t say I will never return to blogging.  In fact, if I have learned anything of value these last four year it is that I know much less than I previously thought.  I know less than I would like about the world and less than I would like to know about myself.  I am even more woefully unqualified to claim to understand someone else.  Yet, perhaps in this awareness I have at least found a sense of humility.  For this reason, if none other, I can say that perhaps in a month I will return to writing, but perhaps I won’t.

Despite the sadness I feel while writing this, there is still much to be happy for.  I recently received an offer for work as a regular travel writer, perhaps as happy an ending a travel blogger can ever hope to achieve.  I have also recently experienced more success as a photographer.  These two things mean that for the first time I can see a future where I am truly self-sufficient, and while material success is not the bar by which I measure my own or this blog’s success, it is nice to have some outside confirmation that concrete progress has been made.

I thank you all for taking this journey with me and for those of you that wish to do so, I hope you’ll stay in touch.  I like to think of this as a goodbye to my blog, not a goodbye to the many people here I care about.  I would challenge all of you to come find me.  The world still has a lot to offer and I would like nothing more than to discover it together with you.

Tomorrow I will wake up surrounded by new places and new people.  Yet it’s the same world.  A world I still dream about reaching out and changing.  Like most dreams, it may be forever out of reach, but I hope that will never keep me, or any of us, from continuing the chase.

With Love Everlasting,

Jason Nathaniel

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

May our paths cross again someday

Guest Post: How my life is different when I travel…and why it shouldn’t be

This week we have a very special guest post from one of the most amazing people I’ve had the please to meet in my travels: Elise Wach.  One of those rare individuals who not only travels the world, but makes it a better place as she does so, Elise works with the Institute of Development Studies and focuses on change processes at the policy, organizational, and individual levels.  Enjoy some of her thoughts on traveling!

How my life is different when I travel…and why it shouldn’t be

I travel a lot.  I got the travel bug when I was 18 and I haven’t stopped.  I’ve worked professionally in more than 15 countries, and I don’t even know how many I’ve visited for fun.

All of these impressive photos were take by Elise.

I was recently in Ethiopia and found myself thinking, ‘I really like this place, I could definitely see myself happily living here.’  The people are friendly, it’s safe, the sun shines, the food is amazing and

Best Enjoyed Slowly

“Best Enjoyed Slowly” – so runs the new tourism slogan for Latvia, a country not well known for tourism, but which is the out of the way place I’m currently lucky enough to be visiting.  While I would venture to say that most of life is best enjoyed slowly, I’m happy to say that I’ve been able to follow this advice particularly well in a country that, while it may lack the well known attractions of a France, has plenty of its own to offer those with the patience to enjoy it.

The Latvian beach stretches for nearly the length of the country.

Among the many things I’ve found to enjoy here have been the Baltic Sea with miles upon miles of sandy beach, the immense

Your Out of the Way Places – Botswana

In what now seems like another life, I worked at a bank.  Soon after I started there a client called and said that he needed us to settle a trade he’d made in Botswana.  Being new to the job, I said what I normally said, “Sure, no problem.”  Of course I had no idea what to do after that so I simply did what I always did in the situation and moseyed over to my boss and asked what to do next.

“What?  Botswana?  Where the hell is Botswana?”

“In Africa.”

“Oh jeez thanks.”  Apparently it had been a rhetorical question.

“So what should I do now?”

“How the hell should I know?  Who trades in Botswana?  Why would you agree to that?”

Years later, having long moved on, I returned to visit my old co-workers one day.  Turns out they still hadn’t figured out what to do with that trade in Botswana.

While the trade may never have settled, I now know a little about Botswana.  A large, landlocked country, largely covered by the Kalahari Desert, it is located in the far south of Africa.  Despite being a difficult place to do business, it is renowned for its wildlife.  Unfortunately I still haven’t been there to visit, but this week’s reader photo comes from someone who has: Thibaut Astic.

Photo by Thibaut Astic.

A gifted photographer, Thibaut captured this photo last summer (or winter in Botswana terms) in Chobe National Park.  Aside from over 10,000 square kilometers and the largest elephant population in Africa, the park also has the densest populations of wildlife in the country.  Thibaut certainly captured that in this photo where all the “vegetarian” animals had gathered near one of the rare supplies of water.  He said he chose this photo for the feeling of serenity and peace it provokes, a feeling that he said is far too little associated with Africa, a continent of contrasts.

 “They say that somewhere in Africa the elephants have a secret grave where they go to lie down, unburden their wrinkled gray bodies, and soar away, light spirits at the end.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy’s Life

 

A Place Called Vilnius

Lithuania, I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few of my readers would struggle to find it on a map.  Yet it wasn’t so long ago (a scant 600 years) that Lithuania was the largest country in Europe, covering Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia.  Of course a lot has happened in the meantime – Teutonic nights, world wars and Russian annexation, just to name a few – but even so I was looking forward to exploring what has recently been a rather neglected destination.

The Belfry of Vilnius Cathedral

My base for exploring Lithuania was Vilnius, the nation’s