While the exploration and discovery of territories, throughout history, seemed to be a profession reserved for men, in recent decades we have seen the appearance of a new species of modern times: the woman globetrotter.
The one that interests us is not a rare or particular species. Young, she already demonstrated the curiosity to travel the world in books. She wanted to discover everything, read everything.
She was particularly fond of adventure stories. Her first loves were "The Odyssey" by Homer and, later, "The Story of the Wandering Jew" by Jean d'Ormesson. She was fascinated by the concept of finding the end of the road, the world's highest rooftops and the idea of getting lost to find herself. Any form of adventure was exciting and everything, from the discovery of new dishes to new smells, was an excuse to live with delight! Every time she traveled, you could tell she returned a little intoxicated with love.
With time and obligations, she had become attached to a region of eastern Québec, and, over time, she had settled down – until she couldn't hear her own voice anymore and extinguished the fire that was burning inside her. One day, life brought her to Italy. Through Roman delights and the sight of the most beautiful cathedrals, she remembered why it was so important for her to travel: to experience distance and relativity. In front of sublime landscapes, our problems seem so small!
As our globetrotter never did anything halfway, she went back to traveling several times a year, with the mission of seeing everything, understanding everything, and even possessing everything. She easily fell in love with landscapes, cultures and people, until she imagined other possible lives.
One day, the Earth almost stopped spinning. A global pandemic put a stop to all globetrotters.
Ours, of a positive nature, took the opportunity to "cultivate her own garden", just like Candide.
She nurtured her inner space to find happiness within herself, failing to wander in the great outdoors and wide-open spaces. However, after two years, she once again felt like she had lost her inner fire, her true nomadic nature. Was there a happy medium between traveling excessively, almost by reflex, and treasuring every single destination? What if, in the future, she considered each destination as the discovery of a part of herself? Moreover, what if it was possible during these trips to connect and bond with others, allowing us to change the world a little, to build a cathedral, one brick at a time? This is how the globetrotter packed up her bags once again, invested with a new mission, one greater than herself, with the aim of giving back bits of the grandiose life she had had the chance to live.
