Category: Travels
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Judge Wyndham’s Oak
[The Celtic Tree of Life. Source: Google search. CelticArtStudio.] Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening earth. ~~Tagore A few days ago, my friend, Tim, asked me if he had ever taken me to see Judge Wyndham’s Oak. I said that I have no recollection of such a visit. He said,…
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Aethelgifu, The Teenage Abbess: A Peak Inside The Walls Of The Shaftesbury Abbey
[Gold Hill, Shafesbury] Silence isn’t empty, it’s full of answers. It was a chilly day, this fourth day of October. Chilly and windy. Mariam and I had just had a very enjoyable lunch with a former student of mine, Sally, and her husband, Matthew. Sally was in my Geography class when I had the joy…
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Breakfast in Marrakech/Dinner in London
[Trafalger Square, London. The National Gallery of Art in the background. A fast car in the foreground. A lion and a blue-lit fountain in the middle ground. Photo is mine.] Keep calm and go to London… The title above makes it sound like it’s a skip and a flip to make the three and a…
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The Terminus
[A card, purchased at a small souk in the Marrakech Market. It is my name, Patrick, written in Arabic by a calligrapher. The cost was about $4.00. A small amount for a priceless piece of art. Important to me. Photo is mine.] The end of journey is not a period, but a comma. ~~ Anon…
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At The Monkey Finger Mountains: The Palm Frond Boys And The Sad Girl
[The Monkey Finger Mountains in the Sahara. Photo is mine.] Nearly every bone and muscle in my body was saying to me: Did you just ride into the desert on a large animal with a large hump? I ignored the voices coming from the dark regions of my body and sat back in the seat…
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A Tale of Very Old Water Tunnels, Dying Palms & A Police Citation
[One of the many towns we encountered on our way west…toward Marrakesh. Photo is mine.] Traveling-it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. ~~ Ibn Battuta The Great Dunes are behind us. My dream of riding into the largest desert in the world has been fulfilled. I have no regrets, except for the…
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I Ride A Camel Through The Dunes And Ponder The Shape Of Things
Midnight at the oasis Sing your camel to bed… ~~ Maria Muldaur Midnight at the Oasis I did it. We did it. We were shown our camels, and without any instruction at all, we road off into the dunes. Our destination was our Dune Camp. I volunteered to be first to mount the dromedary assigned…
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Nothing Prepared Me For The Medina Of Fez
Leaving our hotel in Fez is an experience. We left our room and walked down a flight of stairs to a sitting room, a sofa with cushions. A baby grand piano is in the next room. Portraits of men in Fezs’ and women in veils. Soldiers with carbines and horses with elaborate saddles. In the…
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