Maps
Trip maps
I'm a little surprised to find I've touched down in nearly every State and Province north of the Mexican border in this lifetime. It doesn't seem like I've traveled all that much. Washington and Oregon are pretty conspicuous misses. I did get within sight of Clarkston, Washington from Lewiston, Idaho one day on a Motorcycle trip down the western edge of Idaho. Does that count? I'm not sure if I've been to Delaware or not- certainly not as a destination but I may have passed through a time or two - I just can't remember. Nunavut didn't even exist until fairly recently and since it's not reachable by road I'll probably never get there.
Google maps
Emptiness
Emptiness shouldn't be thought of as a negative. A lot of people misconstrue that as meaning the opposite of something is nothing. But this is something slightly different. I don't want to get into comparative religious things because that's a complicated topic. But if we were to think about it, the problem of life and death has to do with what comes in between, and what comes in between is an awful lot of suffering. We're not just talking about the pain of suffering, we're talking about suffering. Our common everyday parlance it's called stress. That's a kind of suffering and we die from this. From the standpoint of Zen Buddhism this life isn't some sort of stage mock-up for something else that comes after this. This is what we have. We're right here and we're being in this present moment. What you want to think about when you think about emptiness is a way in which to stay present. Just as, in a way, in a very strange kind of concept, there really is no such thing as time. There's no dress rehersal for anything.
The Artful Mind, Reverend Sohaku Flagg, Rinzai Buddhist priest, in an interview with Nanci Race, Jan/Feb 2003