Coming soon
For a lifelong student of anthropology, history, and philosophy, as well as an avid SCUBA and free diver, a trip to Greece is high on the bucket list.
And YES, it will happen this summer!
Last night, as a fitting conclusion to our family trip to Maui, I re-watched Moana, probably my favorite movie of the kids’ genre.
I can very much identify with the story.
Similarly, my childhood love for the ocean and underwater diving started very early with “Oum, Le Dauphine Blanc” stories.
That was me as a kid…
Ian, Marina, Uncle Patric, who was an oceanographer or marine biologist, exotic animals, and scuba diving in the Polynesian Islands.
Back in Europe, still in high school, I traveled to Jagiellonian University, where I studied with a professor of the botanical department. I took private lessons in biology with the full intent of becoming a biologist.
I ended up a U.S. Marine, East Asian anthropology student, and an advanced SCUBA diver on the beautiful island of Okinawa for the most meaningful years of my youth.
Today, I am more like old Uncle Partic, not Ian, but the dream lives on.
I have dreamed about traveling and exploring my whole life.
I always wanted more than sunset sailboat cruises; I wanted to go somewhere to make a passage.
As a kid, I read books about explorers, starting with Jules Verne (properly pronounced żul vern).
Returning to the quote from Moana and the title of this post:
"We are all descendants of voyagers."
Most people, especially those comfortable with their lives at home, in the city, or in the village, do not realize that we are truly descendants of explorers. Without the drive to explore and travel, humans would likely not survive the bottlenecks of the evolutionary process. I discuss the eruption of volcano Toba 70,000 years ago in a separate post.
In Polish, we have a saying similar to "travels (will) educate (you)." It was also customary to send youth to be educated abroad, to become "cosmopolitan," as my mother would call it. The Greek word for cosmopolitan means a person from many cities.
The opposite of cosmopolitan is a beet (root), or if you prefer radish (root), in Polish "burak," describing a people who are settled, or planted, in their local opinions to the point they are red on the face.
So instead of treating vacations as glam, Instagram swimming pool-side photo shoot opportunities take kids and show them new places and cultures.
All images and videos were taken by Uki, the author.
At this point, I could only export raw movie footage from today's dive.
In the future, I might edit the movie to add names of the animals and slow down some scenes. At this moment, I do not have time to do it.
I decided to post materials I studied for my SCUBA diving refresher dive, I believe these are essential when you get back to water in the new season.
Here is my free-living gear I am taking to Maui, Hawaii.
