journeys

The Text of Roland Barthes’ “From Work to Text” is an entity that exists to be consumed, to be reveled in, and to be learned from. Travel, as an abstract, serves a very similar purpose as the Text. We travel for the sake of journey, for the experiences and lessons to be found along the way. We travel for the fun of it, for the pleasure of new vistas and faces. It costs money to travel; no matter how far you go, you will pay a fee, grand or small, for this multifaceted and beneficial undertaking. 

Journeys can be read like texts, both in the present and looking back, heady with hindsight and newly created and stored information. We can read the landscapes - the land, the buildings, the weather - everything silent can say just as much or even more about the places than anything clamorous. The people will tell you their part of the story, and so will the food, the clothes, etcetera, but nature shaped those things into existence before those stories could be crafted. Coal mines, creek baptisms, and bluegrass all play into popular culture with their roots deeply buried in the land.