Going Deeper - Nancy Cech

Karyn had been planning this adventure for months. She refused to call it a vacation. That sounded so insignificant, like a tour of Disneyworld or something you do at a pool with a sugary drink in hand. No, this was meant to be bigger than that. A trip that would go deep and stir her soul, change her outlook, provide a new lens in which to examine her life. It started out with a trip to Distant Lands travel store, nothing more that. Nothing more than to be surrounded by maps and books and photos of far away worlds. Worlds so very different from her own. Something as different as it could be than being a middle school teacher in Pasadena.

The sections in the store all carefully arranged to be geographically correct. So instead of Africa, America(s), Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe being in alphabetical order they are arranged in relationship to each other. So you could travel the world literally by walking the story. The layout had her wandering in circles. A photo of an Italian countryside would call to across the store while thumbing through a book on the Seychelles. She wishes her friend Sadie was with her so she could share her observations “Isn’t funny how most of the continents start with the letter A. All but Europe, which I guess just had to be different and doesn’t really seem to deserve the title of continent. It’s so small and just bleeds out of Asia.” So there the adventure started in the section of America (south), deep in the stacks with a book titled Fitzroy and a beckoning call to Patagonia.