On beginnings and endings

So this it, I am about to sail from the Philippines to Palau to Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands to Vanuatu to Tuvalu to Kiribati to the Marshall Islands and finally to Micronesia, about 4000 miles of sailing over the next few months.  This is is the realization of a dream I’ve had since I was a little kid in Brazil.

All journeys have a beginning and an ending.  One can trace lines, straight or meandering, between two points on a map and mark the dates when places were reached or left.  But like any organism, journeys don’t have hard boundaries between them them and the rest of the world.  Journeys creep into existence.

So when did this journey begin?  Was it when I was introduced to the Pacific by the books of Emilio Salgari?  Or later, through Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Somerset Maugham?  When I learned to sail dinghies in Boston? When I started sailing larger boats in the San Francisco Bay and saw the boats leaving for the Marquesas or Hawai’i? Was it when I stared at islands with unheard names on a map behind my desk at work?  When I said a teary goodbye to Jenn at the San Francisco airport, or when I finally landed in the Philippines?

I don’t know, but I am fairly certain this journey won’t end when I land back in San Francisco, a few months from now.

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