Whenever I look up at the stars,
whenever I look towards the peak of a mountain,
whenever I look at an image of The Moon or Mars,
something within me is always awakened,
something within calls upon me
to want to venture towards the unknown,
something within longs to drive me to go
where I have never been before,
and I cannot stop myself from setting out
upon an open road -
one that might see me jump inside a cockpit,
one that might see me climb a rock face,
one that might see me put on a spacesuit
and be launched upon a rocket and into space.

I have always wondered what we will find above the clouds,
I have always been curious about
what lives below the surface of the sea,
I have always been fascinated by
what artists create and why,
and I have always been inspired by
the universe of countless points of life
and the possibilities that await us on
the journey of the future that humanity
will never cease to be enriched by
as we reach higher, farther, and faster
than even our dreams could imagine…
I have always been a dreamer -
but I am also someone who gravitates towards 
and likes to be surrounded by people
who are not afraid to be themselves
and who know they are different from
the majority of people they know,
because they are who influence and inspire me
to never stop doing what I do.

Exploration comes in many forms…
the reasons why we are all here
and why we want to be interconnected
so irrevocably to one another
speaks to something about us all
that manifests itself in the ways
that we seek out and look for answers,
because we are presented with a reality 
that makes us feel like we are in a mindset
in which everything we thought we knew
is now in question and must be explored…
since I was a child, I have been walking through forests,
I have been following the trail of discovery,
I have been watching the world and its people
and I have seen change happen
within the blink of an eye,
and as time has gone on I have become
increasingly more interested
in decoding the mysterious messages
left behind by nature and by our ancestors
who wished for us to understand what
we can achieve if we don’t stop pushing forwards
in whatever direction we want to go -
however what we might uncover might not be what, nor where,
we expected to find what have been unconsciously looking for.

I have never let anything, nor anybody,
stop me from being who I have always felt I should be:
someone who feels at home while outdoors;
someone who can be happy and content
while delving into my own thoughts
and wondering what I will do
with what will inevitably emerge
from the event of creation in my imagination;
someone who always remembers where I have been -
which is why I seldom feel lost;
someone who never stops finding something,
or someone, to be inspired by;
someone who can go somewhere
and repeatedly be struck by a deep
and profound feeling of awe.

I have always been, and I always will be,
someone who is a voyager,
someone who is a discoverer,
someone who is a wanderer,
someone who is the definition of an explorer.