For years I had known of a certain side canyon of the San Juan that was supposed to be particularly lovely, a place resonant with power and almost untrodden. The woman who told me about it was a beautiful desert rat, sunburnt dark, with quick, clear eyes; she knew the canyon country like the lines in her hard hands.  She drew me a map on a paper napkin in a cafe in El Paso and made me promise not to tell anyone else about it.  In return I gave her directions to a river of hot sulphur water in the eastern California desert, far up a ravine in the hills.  A trade, place for place.
      Somehow I didn't go up there for a long, long time; it was one of those trips you save up--like a lump of pemmican or a last gold coin--against hard times....That scrawled scrap of a map was something like a talisman, evoking the luminous energy of the woman who had drawn it (I never saw her again) and the mystery, the promise, of her canyon.
      - Rob Schultheis,  The Hidden West

Beyond the East the sunrise,
beyond the West the sea.
And East and West the wander-thirst
that will not let me be.
- Gerald Gould, Wander-Thirst

A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler is one who does not know where he came from.
- Lin Yu-t’ang

The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
            - Basho