What does the spirit of exploration mean to you?
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Imagine a young, handsome man flying high above the arid deserts of Mexico’s Baja peninsula. He is half-American, half-Mexican. He is a crop-duster, flying free in an exotic land. But today is his last day to pursue his spirit of airborne exploration. Something is wrong with the engine. He is going down.
The crash comes quickly, metal shatters, the sound of destruction everywhere.
When Coco lost his leg, he felt nobody wanted him anymore, and he couldn’t be useful in the fast-paced Tijuana and Ensenada economy. So he moved out here, to the middle of a remote desert on the Baja Peninsula, and built a home for himself out of desert scraps and driftwood — no civilization 45 miles or more in any direction.
His only income is the beers he sells to the few random drivers, passing through this treacherous road.
It would be easy to feel sorry for this old hermit, living at the edge of the world alone. But this was his choice. And his story often reminds me of why, as a travel writer, I have evolved my understanding of what it means to have the spirit of exploration.
Sometimes, a traveler will write me an email and say they have just visited their one-hundredth country. And maybe now his goal is to achieve two-hundred countries! Others will write me and tell me they have spent the last two years saving up to send themselves on a luxury vacation to Madagascar — nobody in their neighborhood had ever been that far away.
With only one leg and no other transportation, Coco is limited to a radius of a few miles. Every time he crutches his way into the desert to forage, he is engaging in adventure, danger and unique insight beyond what the hundred country man will ever see. People from all around the world visit his ramshackle home, and he asks them questions, questions, questions about their lives. He tinkers with metal parts, and finds constant mystery in the botany and wildlife of this spare landscape.
Coco is a reminder that the spirit of exploration is not how high you climb, nor how far you go, but how passionate you become about all the bells and whistles, personalities and characters, philosophies and motivations that make up our world.
Coco helped me learn to never differentiate travel and home. Pursue the spirit of exploration in the morning, day and evening. Adventure, wonder, and amazing stories of life on Earth exist everywhere, even just down the street.
People who have a spirit of exploration have a curiosity for knowledge, insight and, ultimately, an eagerness to make sense of the surface of this globe, spinning through space. For everyone who has that desire, there is only one way. You can begin to understand this amazing world in the library. But Carl Sagan said it best. “When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.” And to see the light, we step out the door, and go our own way.
by Erik Gauger
Notes from the Road
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May 27 2008 08:00 am | Sapphire Drinks
June 5th, 2008 at 6:47 am
[...] Erik Gauger who created the amazing site Notes from the Road wrote, in my opinion, the best entry. You can read and rate it at “What does the spirit of exploration mean to you?” [...]