“We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal”

2 Corinthians 4:18

Originally the idea for Vagabond3 was to share our travels, and, like a brand-new stand up comedian, we tried to create interesting content that got a response – any positive response at all meant that we were doing good work.

Years later though, we have grown past just wishing for any response and into wanting to create content that reflects travel in the ways that our lives and dreams connect with travel – leading to the questions “what does travel mean – what do we do with it in our lives”.  

Since over 50% of my travel this year has been within two hours of my city, it’s actually just a specific way of asking ‘What am I supposed to do with the world around me?’ It’s a question I think EVERYONE asked last year at one time or another.

Travel is what made me a filmmaker. I’ve always wanted my work to be more than just “[holding] the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature” because, at it’s most basic, travel is 25% the place visited and 75% personal response to what is being experienced.

This lead me to try and relate some text I found at The Painted Pony in St. George, Utah with the experience of being there.  When I started researching, I discovered the text was a portion of “The Great Circle” by the Native American spiritualist Black Elk.

This isn’t, in even relatively liberal terms, a travel video. This is a video inspired by the world I’ve seen and portrayed through my skill set. This is where I think the benefits of travel are best seen. Even the most hardcore long-term traveler would agree, the point of traveling isn’t just to visit places, but to be shaped by them – to visit the seen and be changed by the unseen.

The challenge to all of us is to express who we are, what our experience is, and define the world in which we want to live in whatever terms and with whatever tools we have. I hope to share more of my experiences in the coming years in this way, not through direct statements but though emotive work.