Morelia, Mexico: The Roots of Why I Travel

Posted on September 2, 2012 by mlgray

Something from the Vault: Volume #6

Just a week before my sixteenth birthday, I’m standing on the street in front of my language school in Morelia, Mexico, a bit bored, waiting for my ride to my home-stay. Or at least I think I’m waiting, at least I think I’m bored.

As my combi, (a 1970s Volkswagon Bus striped with bright orange paint and covered on both sides by names of neighborhoods where this van will eventually deliver its passengers) pulls up to the street corner, I’m contemplating what I should do with all my free time before comida. Continue reading →

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Summiting Seven Peaks of the San Jacinto Mountains

Posted on August 26, 2012 by mlgray

Different Modes of Exploration #12: Cross-country Hiking

Photos Courtesy of Daniel Gray, © All Rights Reserved

Wellman’s Cienega

The guidebook warned of timber rattlesnakes lingering throughout the cienega (a hanging marsh high in the mountains). So as we step off the trail at 8 am, I look around cautiously, and make a good bit of noise to warn the high altitude serpents of our arrival. I’m on another adventure with my brother that has me wide awake at an unfamiliar hour.

We’ve already hiked five miles since dawn. But this juncture at the cienega signifies the moment when we step off the well-worn trail (which provides fast and easy hiking), and onto paths lightly marked by small stone cairns, if marked at all. My brother takes the lead, though we soon leap frog past one another, each thinking that we’ve discovered the path of least resistance towards Marion Mountain, our first of seven peak destinations in the San Jacinto Wilderness. Continue reading →

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Traveling with Others

Posted on August 20, 2012 by mlgray

On several occasions, I’ve heard the phrase “it’s not where we travel to but who we travel with that matters.” After a summer of visiting friends and family throughout the country, this saying has never rung so true. And I think it applies to life as a form of travel as well.

We can exist in our world today with enough mobility that we live hundreds, if not thousands of miles from people whom we hold very dear. We make friends in one location, (work, high school, our religious community, college, a study abroad program, our neighborhoods), and easily move on to the next phase of life in a completely different place. While we intend and attempt to “stay in touch,” distances easily rupture new and old friendships. Some how in an era of connectivity, we become isolated. Continue reading →

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Departures

Posted on August 12, 2012 by mlgray

Though I fortunately have a back log of stories to post, this week’s focus is short and simple. We usually write about the great adventures of travel, the unforeseen challenges, the humorous difficulties, the chance encounters, the romanticized nostalgias.  But we often overlook the most difficult hurtle: leaving.

I returned from two weeks in California on Monday night after a 16 hour car ride, only to sleep for a few hours, conduct a board meeting in Denver first thing Tuesday morning, pack a new bag and head for the airport to catch a red eye to New York City. I questioned this trip not just during those 24 hours, but during the month prior as well. Did I really want to leave again?  Could I stand another plane ride?  Should I be revisiting places before seeing unfamiliar lands? Continue reading →

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Market Madness: When a Chicken Grabs You by the Shirt in Oaxaca

Posted on August 5, 2012 by mlgray

Something from the Vault: Volume #5

While living in Oaxaca for four months during the spring of 2008, I focused a good bit of my free time on travel writing.  Reading over the essays from my stay in Oaxaca revealed the philosophical questions I grappled with during that era, similar discussions which I continue to engage with today. I revised this piece to my current style while trying to maintain my thought process from four years ago. Enjoy!

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When the claws of the chicken carcass caught my shirt, I realized that I was no longer wandering around my American grocers: Vons or Trader Joes or Whole Foods.  Despite all attempts to avoid the sharp little nails in the tight walkway of Oaxaca’s Mercado Abastos, sometimes you just can’t escape an intimate chicken encounter. As I unhooked the poultry from my clothing, I looked around to see if other shoppers caught my foolish act. Continue reading →

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Born to Run?

Posted on July 29, 2012 by mlgray

Strawberry Cienega on 1st Portion of Traverse

Different Modes of Exploration #11: Trail Running

I wake up with the question, “am I born to run?” turning in my mind.  Christopher McDougall’s book doesn’t pose the phrase as a question but as a statement.  At the 5 am hour though, I’m not even sure I’m willing to wake-up and go for one run, let alone admit that running is an inherent, genetically-coded, evolutionary standard of my primal humanity. But according to the text message my brother sent to urge me from my slumber, I better be ready: he’s promised to lead me on a sixteen mile jog of my favorite loop in the mountains of our youth near Idyllwild, CA. And since reading Born to Run by McDougall a few months back, I’ve felt a continuous urge to run. Continue reading →

Posted in At Home in California, Different Modes of Exploration, Running, Travel | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Inspired Travel

Posted on July 22, 2012 by mlgray

Regardless of our attempts to act congenially, patient, happy, kind – you name the generous adjective – we are finicky, contentious, and easily frustrated creatures. And nothing highlights our irritability more than travel.

Travel jerks us from our daily routines, uproots us from our habitual living, and drops us in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people doing unfamiliar things at unfamiliar times . . . probably the reason why so many people don’t like to travel, and why so many others thrive on the exhilaration of the unknown road.

But to feel this sense of disruption you don’t need to travel somewhere exotic or far away. Continue reading →

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Road Music

Posted on July 16, 2012 by mlgray

Inspired by last week’s post about educator and dulcimer musician, Steve Hudson, I’ve been thinking a lot about music and the soundtracks we compile for road trips in the U.S. and adventures over seas. After The Doors self-titled album kept my father and I awake late at night as we drove across the dark and desolate Utah desert, I’ve also begun to contemplate how particular music should be played at particular times. Continue reading →

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Ode to the Teacher and Dulcimer Musician

Posted on July 8, 2012 by mlgray

Whenever I drive out onto the open highway, the inevitable question, “what is the road?” enters my mind. And every trip offers additional answers to the inquiry, prompting the question again and again. Most recently, while driving from my family’s home in California to my home in Colorado, these answers emerged . . .

The road is poetry, rolling and riding under ghostly silhouettes of Utah rock formations, flying through the desert blasting the Doors with my Dad, vanishing gas stations left to cinders and dust, neon billboards and ripped apart signs broadcasting products and strip malls and adult stores in Texas, rabbits dodging semis and deers that didn’t quite make it, old diners with charm and modern fast food dives crisply covered with dirty tile grout, truck stops filled with nick-knacks and pre-packaged food delights and necessities of newly found needs, specific tales and general myths, and the road is all of this.

The road is music and movement, Continue reading →

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A Glass Filled With Travel

Posted on July 1, 2012 by mlgray

Different Modes of Exploration #10: Wine

My nose leans in towards the last sip of a Central California Pinot Noir, a grape varietal (one of my absolute favorites) described as “silky, complex, subtle and beautiful,” by the experienced wine enthusiast guiding me through a tasting. This is our third wine of the night, representing a 3rd vineyard, a 3rd vintage, and a 3rd varietal.  We haven’t been around the world by any means, but we have traveled (via the senses) to several different locations and several different years (yes, we’re time traveling), during this wine voyage.

After exploring 2/3rds of California’s coast over the past three weeks, enjoying nearly thirty wineries and breweries in that time, I’m finally inclined to say a small something about the ability of wine and beer to assist our travel to (and in) far away lands.  I’ve been hesitant to discuss wine and beer as forms of travel for fear of sounding trite, corny or over-indulgent.  But after hearing a well-known winemaker discuss the concepts of terroir, somewhereness, and tepacity, I’m convinced that these alcohol-based time machines of fermented grapes and malted barley offer a less-explored mode of transportation. Continue reading →

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