The Urge to Travel

by Ralph Windoes

 

When God created the earth, He built it in great variety - mountains and deserts, frigid glaciers and tropical jungles, oceans and lakes, streams with canyons and waterfalls, prairies and hills. On each section He placed thereon certain flora and fauna that would only live and thrive in that certain area.

 

And He created Men to live with it all. Men of varied races and colors. Men best fitted to live on, and with, the great variety that He built into this earth.

 

Ralph Windoes in 1949 - photo courtesy of Thayer SouleAnd in Man He placed an urgent desire to see all of God’s Wonders, and all of God’s Creations. We call this urge “travel,” and it is as much a part of Man as is the heart that beats within his breast. It is the urge that drove Early Man to sail forth upon uncharted sea. It is the urge that keeps him forever “on the go.” It is the urge that causes him to wonder what distant lands are like, and to view, for himself, just how the Men who live there work, live and be happy.

 

A handful of us are able, because of worldly wealth and leisure, to see much of this earth, and many of its people. But most of us are not as fortunate, and we have to content ourselves to satisfy this urge through other media. Many thousands of books have been written on travel, and many thousands of photographs have been printed. All have been avidly read, and studied. Which is good.

 

But these lack the big essential - motion. For Man, and earth, are never still, and a photograph cannot capture the changes that are constantly there. But there is one media that can, and does, capture these changes - that which we call the “motion picture.” Combined with the marvels wrought when these motion pictures are in full and natural color, and the scenes that are being viewed are described by the man who was there and who made the pictures, we have a media that is next only to travel itself.

 

These “Travelogues” as we have come to call them, are one of life’s great blessings. And Man has come - only in the past few years - to fully appreciate them. Now the “urge” can be completely and comfortably satisfied as one sits in a darkened room, and puts HIMSELF in the places he is viewing on the screen. It is for this reason that these Travelogues play such an important part in the lives of the many thousands of people who are privileged to see them. It is for this reason that Travelogues have come to be recognized as being the only media of family entertainment that fully, and ethically, satisfies one of Man’s greatest desires. It is for this reason that Travelogues have not only been accepted by huge groups of cultural people wherever they are offered but the demand for them is constantly increasing, and they are now being sought after by groups in every walk of life. For, in no other way - excepting in travel itself - can Man really learn of the beauties and wonders that God created when He built this earth of ours.

 

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