A Sense of Wonder

This entry is going to strike a few of you as "odd".  Stick with me, I'll make the connection to my usual topic before you know it.

Two days ago as I write this we lost author Ray Bradbury, one of the most profound and wonderful writers of the last hundred years. His work, whether novels, short stories, visualizations of some kind or simple commentaries, was nothing less than beautiful. Despite the continued insistence of the media in noting him as a science fiction author, in truth he was much more a "fantasist" in the classical sense. He knew, when he wrote The Martian Chronicles, that no such Mars existed. It was his own imagination at work, creating worlds where there were none. In its own way, his Chronicles were the direct lineal descendants of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars.

Bradbury came early to me. Unlike so many of my favorite writers I cannot recall which story was my first encounter, though I rather suspect it was one of his stories in his famed collection The October Country. That seems to meet my childhood sensibilities, and it certainly is an early recollection.The Scythe and Uncle Einar are among my all-time favorite stories of any writer, regardless of genre. 

Another, the name of which is missing from my mental database, involves a story being told by one legendary hunter to another. He is on the hunt for a lion, and Bradbury skillfully wove the story to the point where, when I arrived at the last line, it scared the jeebies out of me with a visceral kick -- an experience ingrained in my memory, and never quite duplicated before or since. Utterly brilliant.

Bradbury wrote about people, and monsters and aliens (or were WE the aliens?) and made them all…human. Of all the greatest writers of his genre and generation, Bradbury wrote about characters and characterization. They were the focus and heart of his tales. What happened around them was defined by their own perspective, their own fears and anxieties. Their relationships. Bradbury could see the heart of anyone and anything he chose to explore.

So, why am I noting the passing of one of my favorite authors here in a column dedicated to the art of travel? Not only because I can -- the absolute power bestowed upon me by the Gods of Blog allow for that -- but because there is a true and legitimate connection.

Bradbury took us places. 

In his writings he managed to transport me to the African Veldt; to a small midwestern town which, as writer Mark Tiedeman has already observed, never did and never could exist. But it did in my mind's eye, as it did for so many other people. In a very direct way, Bradbury fueled my lust for travel as no other writer did. He made these other places real and tangible, so that when it came my own time to go and see them, they had a familiar sense about them. My midwest is comprised of the farms of stories such as The Scythe, The Jar, The Lake. My cities are the cities of The Crowd. My sea coast holds fearful, magical things such as are found near The Fog Horn. Or in the visual manifestation of Bradbury's 1956 script adaptation of Herman Melville's MOBY DICK.

The Pedestrian, which warned us about television versus seeing the real world and the wonder it contains -- in a way a sister tale to the well-known work Fahrenheit 451 which warns us about the loss of books. 

Through his love of storytelling….not writing, but storytelling…Bradbury conveyed the innocence of the youth I wanted when I was young, and the youth I imagined when I grew much older. He encouraged me to think, to imagine, to experience. He taught me about a sense of wonder, of how we could see magic in the mundane, and how even the most innocent of scenes might contain an adventure, or terror, or love.

He gave me his worlds and his peoples and his wonder at the world. The ability to see these things informs me as both a traveler and a photographer.

And for that I am eternally grateful. 

R.I.P. Mr Bradbury.

A Personal Journey