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I've decided to create this part of the site because I found that I had a lot of friends who were interested to hear about my travels, and this seemed like a good way to share with people who live all over the world. Just in 1998 alone I went to Iceland (twice), Greenland, Paris, Rome, Puerto Rico, Canada, India, Nepal, and Thailand. In the USA, I went to San Francisco, New York (maybe 11 times), Washington D.C. (several times), Detroit, New Orleans and Key West. So far in 1999, I've only been to Finland, Norway, Iceland, and Costa Rica. I have had some travel inside the country, as well. I've been to Tampa, saw the International Space Station being built at Nasa at Cape Canaveral, Boated around Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, journeyed to Old Williamsburg and Jamestown, where the first settlers lived, Stopped in at Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, GA, went to a Rainbow Gathering and through several caves in Pennsylvania, attended Pagan Spirit Gathering in Ohio, went to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (again) in VA, and otherwise found myself in Michigan, Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, South and North Carolina. Actually, where I most wanted to go was to Antarctica. Ahh, well, I have it lined up for 2000.
LAPLAND (Finland, Norway, The Arctic Ocean) PARIS Want to see the skeletons under Paris? This unretouched double exposure accident made for some interesting photos. ROME, There is a photo essay The Crypts of the Capuchin Monks PUERTO RICO also the Masks of Mardi Gras EGYPT, Check out K M T for Obsidian Magazine featuring my Egyptian photos. Also Under the Golden Eye of Ra. MEXICO, Take a look at my book series, starting with Marigolds Under The Mexican Moon and the Day of the Dead
Stalking Soul Above the Treeline
My Summer Vacation Travel FAQ Q. Hey, you must have a great job to get to go to all these places, right? A. No, I pay for all these trips myself, and no, I am not independently wealthy. Many of the fares were at discounted rates. I will say, however, that the nordic countries are almost universally VERY expensive. A bit of a shock for me when I was there, I can tell you. Q. Well, why do you like to travel so much? A. First of all, I can think of no better way to expand one’s perspective more than immersing yourself in another culture, also I just plain like it. Secondly, I have a pet project of creating these children’s book/CD-ROM’s. To get information about the concept and an exposition of the first title in the series, click here. Q. I checked out your book series and it looks great! Where can I buy them? A. Unfortunately, you can’t. After refining the project and the media kit to promote it for years, I was able to attract the attention of an established New York literary representative. Regrettably, they were unsuccessful in getting any of the appropriate publishing houses to accept the project and have since dropped me. At this point, I feel I should let the project lie dormant for a time while I think of a way to rework the basic concept and make a go of it again someday. Q. Why do you seem drawn to cold places? A. I don’t really know the answer to that, but it is true. I had a very powerful "genetic memory" experience in Iceland at Gullfoss and again at the shore of the Arctic Ocean in Laplandic Norway in which I felt a powerful remebrance/identification of being an ancient Viking. I have an article about it here on this site. Why I'm having to go to the trouble and effort of getting in touch with these experiences at this point in my life has yet to reveal itself. I can tell you that an emerging understanding of all northern polar cultures has come to really fascinate me, whether they are Greenlandic, Lapp, Inuit, Icelandic, Siberian, and recently, Ainu. Q. What kind of cheap air fares are you getting? A. Icelandair will fly you to Iceland, put you up in the county's best hotel and feed you an excellent breakfast for 3 days, 2 nights September-April for $299.00. USAirways flew me to Paris for $269.00. Q. Don’t you ever just relax? A. Call it a matter of personal style, but I usually move at a pace that is maddening to others. The flip side is that I get to see and do a tremendous amount in an amazingly short amount of time. The Lapland trip was all traveling 24 hours a day. No stops, no hotels, no showers. Just a long push to reach the Arctic Ocean. I made it though, and took a nice Swedish sauna and dip in Rekjavik’s volcanically heated pools on the return trip. Q. Where to next? A. Antarctica. Travel Tales! May 1999 Lapland/Iceland trip Highlights • Washington D.C. Since I had to drive 7 hours to get to Baltimore to catch my Icelandair flight, I spent the day before I went out of the country in our nations capitol. It really is an amazing place and definitely on of my favorites in the whole world. The sense of power that place has is absolutely amazing. Here's what I visited on this occasion. -The John Singer Sargent exhibit at the National Gallery of Art -The Constitution and and the Declaration at The National Archives -The Thomas Jefferson Memorial at night -The Capitol Building -The Devi (Goddess) exhibit at the Sakler Gallery -The Freer Gallery -The Gallery of Asian Art -The U.S. Supreme Court Building -The Library of Congress (Thomas Jefferson Building) • Vapua, the May Day of the (vastly inebriated) Finns My Hosts in Helsinki I owe a great debt of gratitude to my wonderful hosts in Helsinki, Maiju and Ben. Together they have an organization serving the local pagan community called Lehto, which has an enterprising newsletter called Saida (all in Finnish). In addition to being gracious and excellent hosts, Maiju is a superb cook and surprised me by indulging me with a sample of traditional Finnish cooking featuring local mushrooms, reindeer and moose meat and other delectations. Ben, in addition to knowing a lot about magick, quantum mechanics, and folkloric anthropology, is also an adroit linguist, and has invented his own language. That's right, his own exceedingly well researched, comprehensive, massively rich and involved language. But as voluminous as it is, it’s not complicated because it functions according to a powerful set of rules, which make it extensible, yet easy to understand. Did I mention he’s from North Carolina? They took me to spend an afternoon at Suomolinna (castle of the Finns) with their friends Mia and Olle, and later we walked through downtown Helsinki through the wreckage of the Vapua celebration from the night before. Vapua is analogous to May Day or Beltane, an ancient celebration of the coming of spring and the mother goddess, etc. The Finns celebrate this by doing what they seem to love to do, drink! They also wear all kinds of funky clothes and little devils horns with blinking Christmas lights inside them. The recently graduated students party down in these body suits with patches topped off with little nautical caps. Go figure. • Celebrating Beltane with the Witches of Helsinki The Lehto group also had a wonderful event for May Day in a stone circle in a Finnish woods. During World War 2, the Russians and their Mongolian workforce blasted out a lot of caves in the sides of these hills outside of Helsinki which never got used. Lehto placed all these candles in the nooks of the rocks. The effect was great, it reminded me of the sacred caves in the mountains of Nepal around Kathmandu where the holy men have come to meditate for centuries. We began these spontaneous vocalizing that blended well together in the cave, some of the group reciting lyrics by the Finnish group Hedningarna. Very nice. We then danced the maypole dance on the rocky bluff. Mind you it was snowing by this time, spring seemed far away, and we were freezing as we were floundering around with trying to do this maypole thing. It was very comical. After the mead on around the fire it was time for my wonderful departing meal and a quick rush to the train station. • Roveneimi After 12 hours overnight on the train, I arrived in Roveneimi, capitol of Lapland and directly at the arctic circle. After getting my bearings and one of those decorative little scandinavian open-faced sandwiches, I headed out to see the man. • Santa’s Village Only, he wasn’t in. Maybe he was sleeping of a hangover from Vapua. In any case, It is a whole commercial Disneyland style Santa complex! Right up there in the polar north! And it was also very surprising to see how many Japanese visitors were there in Lapland, including a lovely couple I had breakfast with, Daisuke and his girlfriend. • The Arcticum This museum dedicated to the worlds polar cultures totally blew me away. So well done so huge and so unexpected! I can’t recommend it highly enough. • Ivalo and Inari After a short hour in the Arcticum, I was on a bus headed farther north, deep in the heart of the Land of the Saami people. The Saami are the tribal reindeer herding nomads of the polar north from all over Scandinavia, and especially Lapland. Inari is a local hub for them and you can find a lot of craft shops and another excellent, mindblowingly great museum there, this one dedicated to the Sami people past and present, and includes wonderful artifacts from 10,000 years ago. Other experiences on this trip that I have yet to write about • The long drive up to the Arctic Ocean -the midnight sun -Viking memories at sunrise, 3:30 am -California Girls -Kirkenes  • Swedish Sauna• Meeting Olla and Peter • Snowmobiling on the Langjokul Glacier • Election frenzy in Rekjavik • Washington D.C. Part 2 -The Hirshorn Museum of Modern Art and Sculpture Garden -That Washington Park -The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. They were having both a special mineral show, which was great because, having just returned from volcanically active Iceland, I was in the mood for lava. Especially interesting was the special exhibit on the Ainu, an northern tribal people of aboriginal Japan. Like the Laplanders and the Greenlanders, they had a specific polar character, but the style was such an interesting blend of tribal and proto-Japanese. |
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Scott Fray
P.O.Box 2293
Reidsville, NC 27320
336-634-0108
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