'The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.' -Saint Augustine
My love of travel is tied directly to my love of reading. This runs exactly parallel to the moving and traveling I was exposed to from infancy. I learned to read before I was in kindergarten, first from imitating the words that went with the pictures on any given page of the Uncle Wiggly books my Dad read to me when I was little and later, as my Mom tells me, from hanging over the back of Dad's chair as he read the paper every day. In school I lived for the day the RIF (Reading Is FUNdamental) van would come. When my brother and I were old enough, our parents let us ride our bikes to the library int he summer; what a treat to walk into that bright, high-ceilinged room knowing that I could pick any book there. I was never far from a stack of books. I am still never far from a stack of books.
When I was a kid it was books, as much as the traveling we did as a family, that exposed me to the possibilities waiting for me in the world beyond the couple of counties my young life revolved through. With a book in my hand, I could go anywhere. I would become so engrossed in imagining the action and descriptions in the book I was reading that everything happening around me in this world fell away completely. Every page I turned was a mini-vacation, a brief trip to other places and lives different from mine.
That's why I'm so excited to be where I am as I write this entry. I'm sitting at a table in the newly reopened Bookman's store in Flagstaff, Arizona. Bookman's is not merely a used book store. It's a treasure, a godsend to readers with appetites as voracious as mine. They give fair prices in exchange for an eclectic variety of books, electronics, music, dvd's, and tchotchkes, plus they have a cafe that sells some pretty friggin' good coffee and espresso beverages. They've been closed for about a year, because last winter the heavy snows here in Flag caused their roof to collapse, ruining nearly every piece of inventory they had.
Bookman's has been an Arizona institution for something like twenty-five years. There are five other locations scattered about Tucson and the greater Phoenix area. I can't adequately express the allure of this place. You'll have to come check it out for yourself sometime. Suffice it to say that, on every trip I make to Flagstaff, I stuff a duffel bag full of books and lug them all the way here for the sheer pleasure of being able to get trade-in money here so I can buy more books to drag home. I can't think of a better way to merge my love of travel with my love of books.
Another reason Bookman's has given me to love it this past year: When they lost their inventory and had to close, they did not lay off or fire their employees. Instead, they asked the employees to volunteer for the charities they support in exchange for continued receipt of paychecks. As it became evident that they would definitely reopen in the same location, they sent their staff into the communities around Northern Arizona, scouring collections of private citizens in order to procure inventory with which to stock the shelves. In this precarious economy, is that not a beautiful thing?
I've been here for about three hours so far, and I'll stay another hour till they close. The books I brought from Illinois are still in the car. This was mainly a reconnaissance mission. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the place and spend some time perusing the Southwest/Arizona and travel sections, both of which are so extensive that two hours of close examination only got me about halfway through them. The list of places I plan to explore in person is greater than the resources that will get me to them right now. In the meantime, the words written by others transport me there, orienting me in my own life as surely as a compass.
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