Why travel?

We need to travel.If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown our senses dull,our world becomes small,and we lose our sense of wonder.Our eyes don't lift to the horizon,our ears don't hear the sounds around us.Our experience is restricted,as we pass our days that is both comfortable and limiting.We wake up one day and we have found that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.Don't let yourself become one of these people.The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking chances a traveller has to take.But if you take them you will never regret your choice.Sure there are moments of doubt when you stand alone,on an empty road,in icy rain,or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed.But,as the pains will come,so to will they fall away.In the end,you will be so much stronger,so much clearer,and a so much happier person,that all the risk and hardship you have endured will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge you have gained,and the life you have lived.

-Kent Newburn
'letters to my son'