The Muddy Delta of the Paraná River near Tigre

Here I am, within a couple of weeks of lifting off for Iceland; and what is going through my mind? Other places I want to visit. I am far from finished with Argentina. Above is the delta of the muddy Paraná River near where it debouches in the Rio de la Plata near Buenos Aires. I was never able to see Bariloche because of the volcanic eruption at Cordon Caulle in Chile. And Martine did not want to visit the Iguazu Falls along the northeast border with Brazil and Paraguay (those pesky mosquitoes!) nor the old Jesuit missions in Paraguay and Misiones Province (again, the bugs).

I don’t know how many years (or months or weeks or days) are left to me—and I don’t want to know. I just know that my sense of wonder is expanding even as my time is contracting. Will my last breath be inhaled near Ulan-Ude on the Trans-Siberian Railroad or at Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes or by the Látrabjarg Bird Cliffs in the West Fjords of Iceland or by the ruins of Petra in Jordan or the Széchenyi Baths in Budapest or … wherever?

It doesn’t much matter to me where. I keep thinking of the words from Witter Bynner’s translation of the Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu:

From wonder, into wonder
Existence opens.

If I had the money, and if I were no longer committed by my lack of funds to work in accounting, I would be on the road at least half the time.

Then, and only then, I would buy a good notebook computer to take with me. (Otherwise, it’s more of an onus than a bonus to me.)

Note: Since I originally published this, I saw Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “The Vagabond,” of which this stanza is the refrain:

Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o’er me;
Give the face of earth around
And the road before me.
Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I seek, the heaven above
And the road below me.