About the Frontier Journals

Once, I saw a poster in the biology department prep room

that showed a cell in the process of stretching while new connections were forming.  The imaging used gave the poetic appearance of some sort of cosmic background.  The caption read: “the human mind, once stretched to a new idea, never returns to its former dimensions”.  I saw that poster nearly everyday for a few years. 

Hi, I’m Alex.  Recently, I’ve been blessed with a job that lets me travel and spend time in places of great beauty.  However excited I am for this particular opportunity, I have always viewed so many little things with a slip of grandeur anyway.   I love to think and to embrace the very picture of an experience.  Perhaps that’s part of why I love travel so much.  In any case, I kind of love people too.  Every now and then I get this inkling that whatever thoughts and ideas I come up with…just aren’t worth it if I don’t share them.  But it’s not just that – I want to hear yours too. 

You see, I’m pretty indecisive; but I’m ok with that.  The Greeks valued the whole picture – a man that could play several sports well enough, a man who was a philosopher and a politician.  Well, Western culture held to the idea with “The Renaissance Man”.  You know, horseman, musician, swordsman, painter, poet, lover extraordinaire, etc?   Well, I won’t claim to be a master of these crafts, but I’ll admit that all things fascinate.  

Where did all that lead me?  

Well, there’s kind of a theme somewhere in there – exploration.  I’ve come to love literature, paintings, and remnants of history that push our frontiers, physically or mentally.   The view from a boulder that overlooks one of Colorado’s alpine lakes and pine valleys, a painting of a 17^th century vessel amidst a storm on a lonely sea, or an altogether unnecessary  sextant on my desk, frequently occupy my thoughts.  Largely, these are images of brave, trekking souls that didn’t know what they would find. Thoreau wrote of the worlds right beside us that we miss in our hurried lives.  But, perhaps Roddenberry’s Captain Picard captures me the best.  This iconic Captain, Roddenberry’s symbolic figure of change and morality, spoke of the final frontier.  It was pretty obvious he was talking about space, but I'd wager he talking about more than that.  I saw that image growing up and it stayed with me.  In fact, it has directed me.  Oftentimes, to these

Questions

Who are we?  As a people – a whole people, all mankind, or as a single culture?  What is love, who is God?  Why do we all share common questions, like, “what’s our purpose?”  What do our evolutionary roots mean today, be them cultural, or biological?  Why are we violent?  Where does our passion come from, our innate human defiance, or our intrinsic need to climb the next peak and round the next bend?  How do these types of things affect our daily lives?   Well, these things, they’re elemental, fundamental, and I will tell you that they are essential.  By God, we are a race of explorers!  Who among us could let these questions sit with answers unsought?

The Frontier Journals are to be a collection of thoughts, messages, reflections, and discussions.  I’m here to try and share what I find at every frontier I encounter, and to read letters from yours.

Thanks,

Alex