Amazon River: The place that makes me feels gratitude

 

Sunset on the Amazon, Wikipedia Photo
Sunset on the Amazon, Wikipedia Photo

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a step. As such a popular adage once says that travelling is part of education. This means that education does not necessarily involved teaching and learning in class alone but also covers learning during travelling. As a result, Henry Miller stated that one’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

Invariably, the use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. (Samuel Johnson). No wonder, “He who does not travel does not know the value of men” This is not surprising, base on many beautiful things travellers do come across while travelling. As such Amazon River is not exempted because it has really transformed my perception of the world. Initially I thought there is no big river like river Niger but having sighted the dense, green forest lines the riverbanks, I really felt so much excited.
The Amazon dumps several million tons of mud, sand, and other sediment in the Atlantic Ocean every day. Much of this sediment has washed down from the Andes Mountains. It turns the Amazon a muddy yellowish colour. This shows that travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
Before given a graphical outlook of what I learnt, it is pertinent to note that a traveller without observation is a bird without wings. Also, Ralph Waldo Emerson once retreated that though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. What I learnt have so much change my view that Amazon is home to many interesting animals.
Secondly, travelling exposes my mindset and curiosity to a vast tropical rain forest lies next to the Amazon River in Brazil and neighbouring countries. More than seven times the size of Texas, it is the largest rain forest in the world.
The Amazon rain forest is home to colourful scarlet macaws, stealthy jaguars, noisy howler monkeys, bloodsucking vampire bats, three-toed sloths, long-nosed tapirs, and powerful anaconda snakes. Many useful plants grow in the Amazon rain forest. They provide food, building materials, rubber, medicines, and other products. The question to ask ourselves is that, how many of us still belief that some rain forest provides food, just like Amazon.
Furthermore, this indicates that one gets to know much about something by moving closer to such thing. Initially I never have passion for travelling, but having sighted Amazon River as big it is, my orientation changes because I learnt so many useful things. Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made clearer. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of heart (Freya Stark).
As I’ve said earlier, I didn’t belief that the world is surrounded by water, but looking at Amazon river, many will all agree with me that, the world is truly surrounded by water and not only land. No wonder Augustine of Hippo once reflected that the world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.  Also we should not forget that, books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home. Invariably a good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving, as put by Lao Tzu. It has fundamentally transformed my perception of the world.
Lastly, I belief that I may have touched my hosts in some way transformed their views of the world because no one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. This is why all travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen. The lesson here is to understand that travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind, as well, to travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries or places.

About the Author: Kunle Adeleye, Nigeria. I am A graduate of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba, Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria.

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