Perspective

Travel adventures often open our lives up to enhanced perspective. I recently finished reading a Christmas gift given by my parents, a book entitled Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America, by Linda Lawrence Hunt. The following is an excerpt from the book:

After her walk across America, she no longer sought all her satisfaction within her private sphere but instead gave her energy to issues in public life. This led to more friendships with a variety of women from many neighborhoods in Spokane. She loved listening to the news on the radio, especially political programs, and kept an enduring interest in politics all her life. She believed her opinion as a citizen mattered. Helga regularly attended Spokane City Council meetings and voiced her perspective in public demonstrations. Those who knew her sensed her abiding and patriotic love for America, a permanent legacy enhanced by her encounters across the land in 1896.

Prior to her travels across the continent, her actions showed enormous confidence in one's individual effort and responsibility to solve problems. But her active interest in the compelling election issues of 1896, and personal encounters with Jabob Coxey, Mary Baird Bryan, and western populists introduced her to the need to work collectively on solving the nation's glaring problems.