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Alvord Desert

 
 
I slip into the streets, then into the desert, then Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. But not before I rip apart my itinerary, the beginning, the middle and the end.

Too much structure in travel is dangerous - because it creates expectations. Tourists seek structure - maybe they only have two weeks a year to get it right, so why not? But I don't have a timeline; I don't need to create the perfect experience. The perfect experience is a myth anyway, because most of travel is sweat and lost luggage.

To define my route would be to seek something; to quest for what I knew before I left. To leave things open is to allow myself open to discovery.


Sometimes people like to add novelty to their travel; finding GPS waypoints, carrying with them a can of beans and photographing by national monuments, claiming themselves proponents of 'anti-travel' and doing everything they can to do things differently.

I see travel as experimental enough in itself to not need any novelty. Those novelties, anyway, are the kinds of things the traveler carries with him. Travel should shed as much as home as possible. Let what may happen, happen.
 
 

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ArrowBryce Canyon NP, Utah



 

 

 

     
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text, photographs, illustrations and web design ©2008 Erik Gauger
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