The Wonders of Life I Have Yet To See

The wonders of life I have yet to see would fill an eight-volume book set.

And that’s the whole point of this website, As We Wonder.

And, I suspect, quite a few other people could say the same thing.

A documentary I recently saw

I recently watched a documentary called “The Bikes of Wrath.” It was about five young Australian men who shared a common liking for the book “The Grapes of Wrath.” They were sitting around one day, as young men are prone to do, sipping on a beer or two, and one of them randomly said “we should ride our bikes along the same route the Joad family took in The Grapes of Wrath.”

There was nothing uncommon about that declaration. Similar “we shoulds” are declared daily in thousands of taverns and college dorm rooms, wild-assed ideas which rarely become a reality.  However, in this case, these five men decided to make the wild-assed idea happen.  They flew from Australia to Oklahoma, shipped their bikes to follow, and embarked on an epic bike ride across half of the country, filming a documentary as they went.

The wonder of it all!

I was cheering them on the entire way because who among us hasn’t wished we could do something similar, just toss caution to the wind and embark on a magnificent adventure?

On the other end of the spectrum, during that journey, they met a farmer in Oklahoma who had lived  his entire eighty-year life within twenty miles of his birth home.

Think about that for a moment . . . eighty years within a twenty-mile radius!  I wonder how many wonders that farmer has seen during his lifetime. I do not say that in a mean-spirited way.  It is entirely possible that his life was filled with wonder, for it is our contention, my wife and I, that wonders can be found just about anywhere you make an effort to find them.  Still, twenty miles?

I’ve lived a full life, but still . . .

I believe I’ve visited thirty of the fifty states. I have stood on five mountain tops. I have hiked hundreds of miles in the wilderness.  I have kayaked, white-water rafted, seen the Northern Lights, and swam with dolphins but still, my to-do list is longer than my arm, and I’m running out of time to get to it.

And Bev, she has a lot of catching up to do

Bev raised kids, worked her butt off in doing so, her life dominated by responsibilities, and she is starting to break free of her chrysalis, ready to spread her wings and fly, and what a joyous sight it will be when she begins to soar, starting this summer, carrying right into 2023 and beyond, in our travel trailer, on foot, riding bikes, jetskis, ATVs, whatever it takes to carry her to new adventures.

And that, my friends, is the reason for all of this

I can’t get that farmer out of my mind. An entire life within twenty miles, in this huge, wondrous world, a twenty-mile radius.  Perhaps that was his choice. Perhaps a farmer’s life does not allow for much travel and adventure.  Perhaps he simply could not afford major journeys.  I’ve known others like that. I met several in rural Louisiana, way back in my youth, who could barely afford food and shelter for their children, and the concept of finding wonder in life was completely foreign to them.  Hell, I can walk a mile from my current home, and I can see a vast array of homeless walking the downtown streets, their quality of life so poor as to render this discussion meaningless.

All I know, for sure, is my options are not severely limited. I have the time. I have some money to play with. And starting, very soon, my wife and I are going to gather up as many memories as we can in the time we have remaining in this grand playground of life.

Hopefully, you will follow along with us, on this blog, and on YouTube, as we take you along with us and chronicle the wonder of it all.