Teleporting

      My love affair with what’s over the horizon/around the corner just out of sight began, I am certain, when Peter Pan told Wendy, John and Michael, "second star to the right, and straight on till morning."  It was nurtured by reading folk tales like, “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” George MacDonald’s Behind the North Wind and Robert Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky. It came to fruition when I heard James Tiberius Kirk deliver his “Beam us up, Scotty.” command. Behind the desire to explore, however, sits the caution that was awakened when I read Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” and realized that sometimes travel could be more hazardous than a physical danger to my own self. Nonetheless, imaging other places and times is a part of the essential me, though I do acknowledge that many of my travels would be to see for myself descriptions originated in novels, poems and songs; I lack the temperament just to walk out the door and wander aimlessly – sadly, I require a destination…and a bathroom with hot running water.

      A few years ago, I had my students imagine they could teleport – not time travel – around the world. I gave them 50 teleports within 24 hours and asked them to research where they would go and why. (Notice the lengths to which I went to trick teenagers into completing the state’s required research threads.) I introduced the assignment by listing my own choices.  To my chagrin I did not keep a copy (I’ve looked) but the ones I remember are below.

In no particular order, my teleports would allow me to

·       Shiver on a mountain ridge in Terra del Feugo staring at pounding seas of the Straits of Magellan

·       Wander the ruins of Angkor Wat mouth agape at the structures

·       Peer over the rim of Mauna Kea gagging on the sulfurous stench of the molten lava

·       Meander the ruins of Persepolis and dream of the days of Xerxes and Darius

·       Stand on the banks of the upper Amazon and watch the piranha demolish a full grown jaguar foolish enough wade

·       Put my hand into the snows of Kilimanjaro and wonder if MacComber really was a coward

·       Watch the Aurora Borealis from the “front yard” of an igloo north of Nome

·       Smell the tar sands of Athabasca

·       Dive the Sea of Cortez and play with the manta rays and the grey whales

·       Sit on the beach in Bora Bora waiting for a real-life Gardner McKay to arrive

·       Watch the sun rise over the Great Pyramid and then set in the Valley of the Kings

Two things are now obvious – I am reader of eclectic literature and a die-hard romantic. When teleportation arrives, I will have so many stamps in my passport that it will need extra pages…if anyone still has a passport then!