“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Our journeys don’t define us, yet they naturally carve out the grooves of experience that offer a template for exploring paths both new and old. The art of travel lends layers to perspective and certain depth to our senses, offering a spiritual education on navigation and the endless opportunity to fall in love with life again and again.

Letting the details in and breathing through each step helps connect to a region and its people, touching the rhythms and noting where the unknown resonates with intrigue and even familiarity. Receiving any space can become a reciprocal blessing of presence to give the very highest regard in interest and respect. We carry worlds within us and there is a generous grace to be found in mingling cultures, while learning ways of being gently and curiously together.

I’ve left a piece of my heart in all the places that I’ve been and in exchange have carried away timeless, geographical nuggets of tranquility, meaning and awe. Framed within the gaze of unending horizons, these vivid, visceral mementos reflect the inspiration of intentional wandering and the art of discovery that brings joy. Each trek is an opportunity for tuning in to what shifts are simultaneously occurring inside and how that timing and synchronicity reveal the nudge of spirit.

This October issue highlights how travel transforms, and the gifts that invested planning and a sense of adventure can yield. Great expeditions are not necessarily the longest, highest or most remote, but often the simplest acts of venturing out and seeing with new eyes those landscapes passed through many times before. Exterior details are only a glimpse of extraordinary history, crossroads of change and the design of how things and populations fall together.

The ultimate journey is the one taken a day at a time, choosing a path that speaks to the heart and forges unconventional routes of brilliant authenticity. With this issue, we’d like to pay special tribute to local author and advocate of wellness and raw food diets, Terri Roberts, who passed on from this earthly life in August. Roberts’ pilgrimage in navigating health and family challenges exhibited ongoing compassion amidst various realms of healing, and her immense dedication to finding and uplifting joy along the way.

Her decision to share openly with this community was a beautiful example of faith and insistence on the gifts of spirit. In her book, Forgiven: The Amish School Shooting, A Mother’s Love, and a Story of Remarkable Grace, she portrays a poignant and courageous response to immense tragedy. With the tender force of forgiveness, she illustrates the potential of sacred transformation in her quest to spread love. A portion of her more recent writing is currently posted on our website, at NALancaster.com, where she’s shared a sacred glimpse of her tremendously empowered, personal journey.

The energetic imprint of our passage through life is etched deeply into the fabric of time and space. This mapping of individual evolution reverberates on in the ways we touch others, the beauty that we create and the positive change we choose to invoke that stretches far into the future.

                        ~Jacqueline

Whether your ventures take you near or far, we celebrate all that travel means for you in this season. Here’s to a safe progression through the experiences that tug at your heart and call forth your greatest inspirations.

                        ~Kendra & Jacqueline, Co-Publishers