{Keeping} :: My Commonplace

Think of a place you have traveled to that was the most amazing, enthralling, wondrous, breath-taking sight you have witnessed. 

Perhaps someplace unexpected, or even not-so-far from home...maybe a destination you had excitedly planned to visit, 

but experiencing it first-hand was even more awesome than you could have imagined.

Do you have it in your mind? 

Do you remember those feelings?

---------------------------------

Although there was no enemy or other danger to be perceived, 

they felt the apprehension and doubt of those who have come unawares upon some awe-inspiring place where they themselves are paltry fellows of no account. 

When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, seven hundred years ago, 

did he not feel

--and did his heart not falter as he realized--

that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all the years of his life and far longer, 

and that he had been ignorant of it? 

That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? 

That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? 

That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatever? 

We know that he felt these things, and so has many a traveler in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. 

There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you.

Watership Down

Richard Adams

p303

----------------------

I can just imagine what Hiram Bingham felt as he came upon this forgotten Incan city in the clouds.
And after clearing away all the over-growth, what a spectacular fortress for all to see and wonder about.