Reasons to Explore: Searching for Mysteries

Adventuring is something that my parents introduced me to when I was younger through family trips. Today, I have found that I have gained a better appreciation for going on adventures. There are many reasons why traveling and exploring the planet have become a passions and a hobby of mine over the years. As I continue to build my exploring resume and visit new places I begin to realize and discover what it is about exploring  that captures me and gives me a desire to go to distant lands and into the wilderness.  

Learning and Finding Answers to Mysteries 

As I started college, I continued to travel with my family and slowly began to branch off and plan my own trips with friends it was during these college years that my fascination with the world and the wilderness grew.  I began taking ventures to lands quite a distance from my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan to places such as Hawaii and Ireland, and taking more trips without my family then with.  Planning my own travel and camping excursions with friends.  Eventually I realized that one of the things that draws me to do this was to learn of the mysteries of the Universe and God.

This might sound strange, I know, but there was something about exploring the planet outside of my hometown, I felt that answers to mysteries and questions that I was, and am searching for, were out there in the world, in the wilderness, and distant lands.  I started realizing that when I traveled or explored, my mind found a certain clarity and I am at times was able to find a peace with things that troubled me or gain new philosophical perspectives on things.  This feeling that answers to mysteries and questions rested outside of the comfort of my home began to make sense to me as my exploring tendencies and desires began to grow.

There would be questions that would arise for me or internal conflicts that would pop up in life or things that didn’t work out a certain way that would leave me feeling helpless, confused, and troubled.  For a great deal of these types of instances I was only able to come to a peace with, better understand, or find the answers to them when I traveled.  For example, it took me to travel to Hawaii, to understand and come to a peace with something that was troubling me for the previous couple of years.

God and the Universe

As I mentioned previously one of the reasons I am drawn to travel is to learn of the mysteries of God and the Universe.  Since I was little I have always had a belief in God or a higher power partly due to my parents’ influence, as well as personal experiences, studying the history of civilization, our best guess on the formation of the Universe, physics, astronomy, this thing called Love, and so on.  The existence of a higher power made sense to me. This is my belief though and I am not forcing it on you, the reader, for it is up to you what you believe and I respect that.

Anyway though, the past several years I have found that traveling brings me closer to God and strengthens my belief in a God (you may have come across my mentions of God in previous posts).  Viewing all of the wonders of the Earth and coming closer to those I travel with, instilled a feeling in me of beauty and serenity that Life itself, Earth, and the Universe really is too good to be true.  I feel that it is one thing for the Earth to alone support Life, but the fact that it is as uniquely beautifully bizarre as it is, and gives us everything we need to live, illustrates to me that the Universe finds us significant, and God, a grand protector, watches over.

 

Exploring allows me to learn a little bit more every day about the Universe and allows me to uncover its mysteries that were laid out for us to find.  This drives me to keep exploring and traveling, to journey to distant lands, visit remote places, make the tough hikes to view hidden beauty, and go on adventures with friends that some people might call crazy, such as a 2.5 mile hike in negative 25 degree weather (50 degrees below freezing).  Drawing closer and uncovering the mysteries of God and the Universe are one of the reasons I have a desire to explore planet Earth and beyond.

–  dustin