Okay, Cyberpals, looks like we’re up and running … literally as well as figuratively. Makes crazy poetic sense that this brand-new website, created with the help of the masterful Bradley Charbonneau, unfolds mere hours before yet another hasty departure — this time for Telluride, Colorado, where I’ll lend my decidedly non-filmic talents to the high-altitude hijinx of the MountainFilm Festival.
Which leaves me in a typical pre-road quandry: to pack, or to write?
In this case, the Middle Way won’t really work. Many people assume that, since I travel for a living, I must be an expert packer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite obsessive "packlists" upon which pre-determined numbers of thermal socks, computer adapters, and Zantac are crossed off with a felt marker, the packing process takes hours, and always culminates in a familiar sense of despair: once again, I’ll be carrying something heavy around the world.
What to do? I put the Brad Meldau Trio on the stereo, pull out the battered red Samsonite suitcase, and take a deep breath. This first "blog" is just a test, after all. With any luck, there will be bandwidth enough and time for me to sign on from the box canyon itself, and add a few thoughts about this year’s event — which will skirt loosely, I’m told, around the rather time-worn theme of "Sustainable Tourism." Tourism, of course, is very easy to sustain; the problem is sustaining the place where tourists go. And despite conventional wisdom, gleaned from long-ago lessons learned in the Himalaya and other naive corners of the world, tourism itself is very rarely a problem. The pressures of overpopulation; slash-and-burn agriculture; religious and ethnic conflict; habitat destruction through logging, mining, and oil exploration; these are problems. As for tourists, our responsibilities are fairly simple: to buy locally, pack our trash, and offend as few people as possible. Never few enough, in my case….
It’s going to be a full summer. Much running around; and I haven’t really been anywhere since returning from Sri Lanka in early March. After Colorado (and a brief return to Oakland) I’m off to New York, then Lisbon, a place I’ve never been (your comments and suggestions are most welcome). Back home briefly, and then another journey, this time to Japan. Details on this oddly connected trips to follow. When it’s all over, and the days have begun growing noticeably shorter, my dearest and most feared wish may come true: the reprisal of my solo stage show, "Strange Travel Suggestions" — this time in the East Bay.
No more putting it off. The Middle Way stops here. It’s off to Colorado — a trip that came up rather suddenly, given the months of notice I was given. When did time start flying by so fast? I have reached that time of life when, as Vipassana teacher Joseph Goldstein once quipped, "Breakfast seems to come every 45 minutes."
Okay, enough distraction. Time to pack those khakis, Clif bars, and whipped-oil socks. See you a bit down the road, somewhere among the aspens.
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