W . . . worry.  No way!  work?  nah.  Wonderment and wanderlust resonate much more profoundly, leaving me hungering for new vistas and thirsting for novel experience.  Sometimes this may be slaked by a two-hour sail on the incomparable Pioneer, a vessel with a century and a quarter’s life.

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Or a sprint aboard the harbor’s greyhound . . . Adirondack.

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According to IBI (International Boating Industry) statistics, 1 in 23 Americans owns a boat, whereas in Sweden that number is 1 in 7 and in China virtually no one does.  See statistics here.  Some quench their thirst for wandering then aboard their own boat, like this sloop from Rhode Island, headed up past Pier 66 or

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or this mini-trawler  from Texas up by Poughkeepsie or

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of this larger trawler from

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Alaska.

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Wanderlust for a vacation is real though compartmentalized into a small percentage of the year.  What would it be like to choose an occupation that would

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take you all around the world (the 70.8 percent of the planet’s surface that’s navigable) all the time, as on this container vessel Zim Shenzhen.  Would it always soothe the spirit  or would it make one

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wary . . . and weary.  Can feelings like weariness co-exist with wanderlust?

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Where does wanderlust with all its curiosity come from?  Is it innate or learned at home?

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I don’t know.  But I do know I’m grateful for my wanderlusty nature, wherever it may lead.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated:  I highly highly recommend you wander up to SUNY New Paltz to see Greg Miller‘s “Panorama of the Hudson River.”  Traveling in various boats including Adirondack this spring, Miller took about 3000 fotos  documenting every single section of the Hudson–west AND east bank–between the Statue of Liberty and Albany.  The results are assembled in a sinuous print in the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art.  Tugs by Vane Brothers, Moran, and McAllister randomly show up.  As if Miller”s accomplishment were not wondrous enough, what makes it even more remarkable is that Miller’s panorama is juxtaposed with G. Willard Shear’s 1910 panorama of all that same geography.  In other words, 2009 shot of the Statue of Liberty is directly above the 1910 one.  Ditto the Palisades, Dunderberg Mountain, Storm King, etc.  You ask about the George Washington Bridge . . .  oops . . . in 1910 the GW was not even planned for.      And the coup de grace . . . in the adjoining gallery is displayed an 1844 sketchbook designed  to help steamer passengers identify riverbank features . . . like the ones I mentioned above.  Along with towns and ridgelines, quaint drawing of steamers appear.  Like a steamer named River Witch. (Now that’s a name begging to be recycled!)  Another, a steam tug pulling a separate passenger barge, designed to keep passengers far away from the boiler.

Also, unrelated,  check out this great blog created by the crew of a tanker called Palva, which sometimes calls in the sixth boro.  Tugster examined Palva here, back in April 2007.  Greetings Palva!  When are you back in New York?

Finally related by topic:  Fielding, whom I know from sailing on Pioneer, is following his wanderlust in South America.  His blog–Under the Northern Star–is listed on my blogroll.