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WELCOME TO. . .KnowYourEarth.net
A website that's aimed at you, the adventure traveler.
A website that's aimed at you, the adventure traveler.
HAVE YOU. . .
Seen total silence?
Tasted the rainforest?
Heard the coral reef's colors?
Smelled the desert sand dunes?
Touched the light from a billion stars?
Earth awaits you. She is the only planet you will ever experience first hand. This website was created by Tom Muller to encourage travelers to gain a thorough knowledge of their home planet---not just its cities and countries and political divisions. Let Earth surprise you with her astonishing variety of climate, terrain, wildlife, and way of life in human habitats.
The vast majority of humanity does not know the Home Planet. Just about every corner of Earth has been discovered and explored, yet humans in one corner do not know other corners. Often, there are hindering factors: economic limitations, poor health, ignorance, fear of the unknown, a lack of travel know-how, anxiety about language barriers and strange cultures, or a low interest in travel. For those who can surmount such travel barriers, Earth is yours to be discovered, on the surface and just beneath the waves.
of Earth's physical, natural and cultural dimensions, one needs to have a
systematic travel plan---visit every 10-degree-wide slice of longitude and every
10-degree-wide band of latitude. This would include visiting Earth’s remotest
and most difficult-to-reach destinations in order to complete such a challenge.
I named it the Know Your Earth Travel Challenge. And when you have taken
up this challenge, your deeper appreciation of Earth will be your precious
reward---your planetary prize.
English poet Robert Browning's words are inscribed on the granite block marking
Antarctic explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton's, grave in Grytviken, on the island of
South Georgia, where the marker faces towards Shackleton's beloved Antarctica:
"I hold---that a man should strive to the uttermost for his life's set prize."
This website presents the Know Your Earth Travel Challenge as a formula for
experiencing the astounding diversity of what Planet Earth can offer the adventure
traveler. The website will grow, as I capture my impressions of the slices visited,
and strive to the utmost in encouraging and enticing you, too, to push your planetary
horizons to the very limit.
In 2018, the highly sophisticated website for extreme travellers, www.nomadmania.com (click on link to go directly to their site) adopted my idea for geographic coverage and it is now one of their yardsticks for experiencing our Planet. They call it the KYE list (Know Your Earth list) of 434 "quadrants," based on latitude and longitude, each quadrant covering an area of 10 degrees of latitude by 10 degrees of longitude---wherever there is land to stand on. This level of geographic coverage is very extensive and challenging. Nomad Mania currently has 8,500 members, aged between 9 and 80+.
"To a man with imagination, a map is a window to adventure."
To which I would add, a map is also the door to adventure.
And Mark Twain put it this way:
"Twenty years from now, you will be more
disappointed by the things you didn't do,
than by the ones you did do. So, throw off
the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover."
Everywhere you venture in your travels, offer something of yourself to the local people you meet. In turn, allow yourself to be enriched by those you've touched while visiting their lands, their homes, their workshops, their schools.
One of my sensory delights is standing outdoors, arms outstretched, with a lively wind blowing in my face, its fluctuating roar thundering past my ears. It reminds me of distant horizons visited and new ones beckoning to be investigated. And it is the harbinger of interesting things on their way.
Now that I am in the twilight of life, there is still so much to envision, attempt and accomplish; life is far too short for the mind's myriad imagined possibilities. For every possibility, there is a treasure chest of challenges. And how is the travel imagination fired up? By reading and knowing, ahead of time, a society's source of historical, cultural and geographic pride.
As for myself, I was given good genes and they've been put to work for me. In return, I pay them handsome dividends: they get well trained in the lessons of life and they will reach the future, long after I am gone.