Author's Foreword

 

 

Author's Foreword

Many years ago I started out on a journey that I hoped would bring me some insight into "The Meaning of Life".

I was divorced for the second time and totally burned out with my teaching job at the Leeward Community College in Pearl City, Hawaii. The USA was embroiled in the Viet Nam fiasco, Nixon was President and my best students had run away to Canada or wherever to escape the draft

I sold the boat I had been living on in the Ala Wai Harbor, finished off what little "business" I had in Hawaii and flew to California to say goodbye to my parents.

I had only been at my parents Ventura home for a few days when I got a letter from a colleague in Hawaii—my friend, Elizabeth English, had been killed in the crash of a small private plane offshore Maui. This shocking end to our physical relationship, the relationship that meant the most to me at the time, really cut the cord to my past. I was miserable, but, as they would say in those days, “free, white and over twenty-one”.

Though I had expected to meet Elizabeth to travel together somewhere during my journey, I thought I might as well continue on alone since I had nothing else of interest to do. I thought the trip would last, at the most, one year. But once I got started I found I liked traveling more than anything else I had ever done.

I backpacked around the world, mainly close to the equator, and, when I got back to Hawaii two years later, I was not finished by any means. So I just kept going—and, in a way, I still am.

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