Tuesday, June 19, 2012

When I travel ...

Everywhere, in everything, there is a story. Even from an old lantern just sitting there on a windowsill, or a piece of candy wrapper thrown carelessly, blown on top of vibrant green grass. There are stories behind these little everyday things. When I travel, I open my mind, not just to the beauty that surrounds me, but to these miniature details that make the moment whole. I have what they call a burning curiosity, a hankering for both fact and myth. Our country is an amazing place full of polarities: crowds and solitude, loud merriment and the silence of mountains, party islands and spiritual isle sanctuaries, urban romps and bucolic wanderings, verifiable raw realities and magical wonders. These disparate elements help fuse a whole, a whole we call home, the Philippines. I want to celebrate those elements, those stories so particular and so diverse that as a collective, they all reinforce the richness and multifariousness of our culture. And in the telling of these stories, I’m hoping that people will not just be enlightened about the many small fascinating aspects of a place, but I’m also hoping that they will be encouraged to protect, preserve, care and nurture. I’m hoping that we will all realize that any action, such as the careless throwing of our personal garbage or the dauntless perseverance to always clean, conserve and nourish, all the choices and actions we make aid in the weakening or strengthening of the whole. I hope that in all the telling and collective sharing, we all come back to that age-old creed of leaving nothing but footprints and that the only thing we can take with us is the story and nothing else.
Please click on the following links to learn more about responsible travel:
The Footprints Project of PhilippineBeaches.org, Save Philippine Seas and Earth Island Philippines 
 A Letter To A Young Mountaineer by Gideon Lasco of PinoyMountaineer.com
 #ThoughtfulTourism by MeetManila.com

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