the simple art of travel
This is day six of the COVID-19 lockdown in New Zealand (I usually would not mention that we were in New Zealand, but as you can see with this digital issue, we have expanded free to the world). The world media seems currently either in team ‘this is terrible’, or they are ‘it's all fine’, stay home and ‘enjoy the time off’.
The reality is it is still very early days, and the virus has had an enormous impact on some people already. Lots of people in the travel and adventure industry have lost their jobs, and our heart goes out to them. It is scary not knowing what the future holds. I am not going to rattle on about change, or how bad it will get or even that it will improve. But what I am going to comment on is the goodness of people.
I listened to Russell Brand recently in one of his political rants, one thing he said that I thought was very relevant was how 'surprised' we are how kind and generous people have been to each other. He went on to say we should not be surprised because that is how it should be; we should always be kind and generous of spirit.
Even walking down the beach, you can see families walking together, couples, people on their own and they all greet each other with a smile. There is collective angst against those who are breaking the lockdown rules, but a real sense by the community that we are in this together.
Adventure Magazine, in 50 years, has never missed an issue, and even though we don't have a printer or a distributor, we were determined to maintain momentum and so have gone to a digital format, which we will look to continue in the future. We wanted to make sure that those in isolation, those in lockdown, have something of quality to read, so we have made this issue free to the world. We hope people everywhere will enjoy it and feel free to get in touch if you have any comments at all. Our next issue is issue 200 – stay tuned! Stay safe, stay healthy and stay connected.