Ready, Setting, Go!

Before I had a passport,

before the internet existed,

and before I had a disposable income,

there were books.

One of my favorites that I would borrow time and time again from the musty school library was Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl.

Especially during fall, before the vision of espresso and macarons in autumnal Paris swam in my mind, there was this:

“We lived in an old gypsy caravan behind a filling station. My father owned the filling station and the caravan and a small meadow behind, but that was about all he owned in the world. It was a very small filling station on a small country road surrounded by fields and woody hills.

…

Immediately behind the caravan was an old apple tree. It bore fine apples that ripened in the middle of September. You could go on picking them for the next four or five weeks. Some of the boughs of the tree hung right over the caravan and when the wind blew the apples down in the night, they landed on our roof. I would hear them going thump…thump…thump…”

It’s crazy to realize that all of my current travel dreams originated from a desire to lose myself in a writer’s imaginary setting. Even while preaching the power of literature as an occupation, I’m surprised to see how much reading has shaped the very fiber of my being.

I could spend my entire career trying to find a way to infect students with a passion for reading. In fact, I just might.