In his Traipse blog, Jonathan Larson writes about the mysteries, the joy and spirituality of the road. When he and his wife, Mary Kay, are not wandering scenic backcountry, they keep a ritual of afternoon tea on the back porch of a shotgun cottage in Durham, North Carolina, where neighbors are known to stop by spontaneously for a cuppa and repartee.
Jonathan speaks five languages and is known for his repertoire of global tales, among them, the following collection of well-traveled stories that belong to the notion of ‘traipse’. They hint, sometimes whisper of what can:
Relieve you of excess baggage
In exchange for hidden gems.
Make you pine for a soul you once met in a wayside tea stall,
Like your own.
Subtract what passes for happiness,
And leave a remainder of soul song.
Probe the prose of travels
In search of its unexpected rhyme.
Turn street smarts into something like reverence,
Turn drudge into mazurka.
Make you walk your gritty hometown
As though you lived in the mountains.
Bring you to towns of dancing names
Like Kandy, Molepolole and Trincomalee.
Turn jaded passengers
Into wakeful pilgrims.
Make you demur with near ones
And kin to far-side-of-the-world neighbors.
