humanity

If nothing else, travel opens your eyes to the colorful quilt that is humankind.

Ripples Upon the Mountain
There, nestled in a mountain range of eternal awe, lies a realm out of time, hidden shyly from the outside world by a shroud of billowing clouds. A lush landscape to breathe in at a pace of personal choosing.
By David Fournier5 years ago in Wander
Savannah and the Notebook
Savannah stepped off the bus, shivering. “LAST STOP!” The gruff, bearded bus driver hollered, rather unnecessarily, Savannah thought. The other two passengers de-boarded behind her, a tall, John Wayne-esque aging cowboy with a white mustache, faded cowboy hat and “denim tuxedo” of a pearl-snap long-sleeved shirt, brass belt buckle and dark jeans. Cowboy boots, pointy, of course, Savannah thought. She always took notice of people’s shoes. You can tell a lot about people by their shoes. The other passenger made his way off the bus, also slowly, a portly man in his 30s, with dark hair, black jeans and black Metallica shirt. Metallica and a denim tuxedo, classic Wyoming, Savannah thought. He was wearing tennis shoes that had probably once been white, now rust-colored from the “red dirt” that permeated everywhere, covered everything in this part of Wyoming.
By Kaley Mae5 years ago in Wander
razor sharp thunderstorms
The Day I Came to LA the thunderstorms were so ferocious our plane was grounded. Our checked baggage was returned to us after eleven hours of standing by for the opportunity to take off. We were instructed to come back the following day in hopes of the unG-dly weather subsiding. My waterlogged suitcases weighed a ton. Everything inside was drenched and funky. I spent the next eleven hours doing laundry and drying out the suitcases. Then I repacked, reboarded and took off for LA. Not once did I question whether I was being given the most blatant omen known to man – torrential downpour. Maybe LA was not the place for me but I was two months past my eighteenth birthday and G-d himself couldn’t stop me. An uneven mix of headstrong, stubborn and razor sharp made me a danger to mostly myself. But I was off and that was that.
By Laura 5 years ago in Wander
Bucket List
Tim sat back in a weathered camping chair. The fire crackled, casting shadows onto the shoreline dancing shapes onto the sand. The flickering light ebbing towards the waning tide. The orange and red hues of the sunset bled into the horizon as Tim fumbled through his olive Patagonia duffle bag by his side.
By Ian Shaw5 years ago in Wander
Frankie's Plan
Frankie’s Plan Frankie was tired. Bone tired. She had pulled another double at the café yesterday, and her feet were still killing her. Today's shift promised to be busy. Frankie would have loved nothing more than to have two days in a row off of work. Like a normal weekend that normal people get every week! Wouldn’t that be awesome? She would never know. She couldn’t afford to have two days off every week! Certainly not weekend days. Those were the big tip days; there’s no way Frankie could miss weekend shifts and stick to the Plan.
By Sheila Dugan Jensen5 years ago in Wander
B 612
Once when I was six my grandfather told me a story about an adventurous Pilot whom, while stranded alone in the Sahara Desert, meets an extraordinary little fellow.
By J.M. MacDuff5 years ago in Wander
Possibilities
She found the pocket-sized book in her grandparent’s library. The term “library” loosely applied – the room had previously been a garage, converted to a bedroom where her parents slept when they visited. Three of the walls were covered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, stacked with books of an incongruous variety. Old, leather-bound religious texts sat next to Agatha Christie novels, and romance novels with covers containing beautiful women and men whose hair blew in the breeze. A perfect mix of her strict grandfather and fun-loving grandmother.
By Sarah Lustgarten 5 years ago in Wander
Lucky Day
Fraught with a case of the vapors after wandering drunk I stumbled upon a local cinema. Surely the cooling systems will provide adequate relief from this sweltering heat I thought. I notice the ticket booth is stationed outside and quite a distance from the actual entrance. No fear, I'm not that sweaty and this theater should be empty enough to not force a poor soul upon my saddening aroma. As I approach the ticket island, hoards of fellow moviegoers race in front of me to form a queue. Blast, the afternoon sun burns with the might of a thousand magnifying glasses stacked one atop another blazing down upon my face.
By Luis Jimenez5 years ago in Wander
Julio & Julia
“What’s that?” Erica peaked at the package in my hand. We lived together in a small apartment in Los Angeles's west side. I furrowed my eyebrow and shook my head, “I’m not sure. I don’t remember buying anything.”
By Micky Ferguson5 years ago in Wander
George
"I'm George from L.A.," he said it so smoothly with such ease I had to look twice. No, it wasn't George Michael not with an American accent, though his 5 o'clock shadow hinted his look came borrowed from the beloved 80's icon and his style in the era of his album Faith. I wished it was him. The small casual perfect Greek hotel was washed white inside and out and George was wearing white loose linen pants and a shirt, he blended in. A smooth disposition to go along with the soft calm of the Aegean summer air and perfect sun. The light outside was sharp, the sun hot in June and the shadows it cast into the stone hotel lobby at once enchanted and invited us to enter. "Are you guys staying here?" he asked and we answered "yes". He wanted to check in and we all checked in at the same time. Back then you needed to give the lobby desk your passport as collateral so we handed them over and got the room key. The hotel proprietor assumed we were a group. My 2 friends and I had our own room and George got his own room. We agreed to meet later for dinner that evening which in the Greek summer starts around 8ish and goes late into the night. We couldn't wait.
By AJ5 years ago in Wander
The Break
He put his shoulder to the wind and walked through the lifeless streets. His mind raced, he wished to free himself from his suburban cell, to live quietly among hills and trees, to hear birds and rivers, to never again hear a siren or crash. He needed space to work, to create and think. His sensitivity often left him wounded by the modern world that valued production over feeling and appearance over sight. His day to day had become torturous to him, he longed for the world of Hesse, Goethe and all those who have lived life as art and thusly created art as life. He wanted to wander, to have no home, to be swept away in the rushing current of existence and the natural world. He wished to lay his head upon a mossy knell because he was tired, not because he had a job to rise for, he wanted to eat what he could forage and not what he could afford. He wished for the stars and the infallible pulse of the universe to be his guides, not the common mind of man that bid him work, endure, settle.
By Henry Gatrell5 years ago in Wander
DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS
I feel excited, nervous, naïve, and filled with unbridled ambition. I am in my senior year of high school, and I won one of the most prestigious awards for a high school student, the Aimee Poisson Grant for Journalism. The grant is awarded to the crème de la crème for high school students. I, with fifty students, will study with some of the world's best journalists for three months. We will stay in dorms at the Université de Paris. The committee will give us a translator, and they have arranged personal tours in Paris for us.
By VALERIE THOMPSON 5 years ago in Wander