It Is A Big World

As a small child growing up, we realize our stature in relation to others. Can't reach items that mother put out of reach. Stairs can be a challenge. Climbing onto chairs rather than sitting. At school there were tiny desks.

When in that northern Wisconsin farming community grade school, it was geography that introduced me to the size of the world. Loved geography. All the different kinds of maps. Lots of different people in the world in a range of skin tones. Some wearing little. Others are bundled in furs. That geography book had exotic artist renderings of deserts, jungles, igloos in the Arctic and oceans ending at the horizon. Wonder if schools still teach geography.

I credit that grade school geography for my curiosity about the world in which I live. Geography also influences my reading. My mostly non-fiction reading includes books about travel and adventure travel. Those books share what I will never experience personally.

There is too much to see and experience personally. It would take several lifetimes to experience just the United States. How many more would it take to explore and see the world. It is a big world.