Please share with each other tourism product components from your favorite destination in the world or country. What are the individual tourism products (both intangible and tangible) that made your experience unique? Was there evidence of initiatives toward conserving those unique aspects? Was there evidence of pressures on the tourism products (overtourism or unsustainable development) that caused you concern about their long-term viability?

One of the most lovely experiences I had was falling madly in love with a stranger on an Island in Alaska. Love was only enabled because of a digital connection. An oddly thing triggered by the tidings of wifi and poetic expression. The human I met bounced back a flow that challenged me to think on my tip toes and I said, “woe, it is raining.” So, life challenged, the less mobile stay on board of the cruise ship because let us be honest here, a clear deterrent to a land’s attraction must be profound when the back is rested in a wheeled-chair.

The product was love in the form of words and dance. Celebration of consenting play, I walked barefoot from pier to pier in a hazy, unclear, early morning. Uniqueness grasped me in the thoughts astray from my motive and duties of caregiving’s way. Weighed down. Step by step. Rainfall weighed me down the steep narrow roadways. Away and away. I was led away. Upwards to a staircase. 

Words like, “here this land,” and, “story goes,” were found etched in wood, rock, and iron. Colors blast me with valves pressured as fast as Ketchikan Creek could pour it’s rich flowing waters in the veins of the island. The call for conservation was the call of sensation. Underfoot, there were tree roots and the freshness of stew; earth, leaves, and mossy brew. I let go of the dance of the long term concerns of the life sustaining blood of the visitor’s bounty. I shared words of goodbey but my heart surely changed.

Overtime the forest will regrow. Overtime, the roads will crack. Overtime, the buildings will crumble. Overtime, the iron will rust. Overtime, the piers will break as the winds and the waves make their makings and takings as the land of great rainfall and salmon collapses and acidified droplets give caustic subsides. Overtime, the thousands of gallons of foodwaste and gaslines will no longer cause divine intervention on a toxic timeframe. Overtime, we work now and overtime. Right in this moment, we need to take time to be with the rhythm and rhyme of a world that takes grime and decay and issues a warning that says if we do not take action in a longitudinal kind of way we will siphon away.

A dream. I awaken with newly found appreciation. I knew that there was an opportunity for dedication. Yet, in absent awareness, I wobbled my way across an Island that day. I saw it flourishing and fading away. It was clear to me by the words of my lover that we were sent into eachother’s way to weigh all the balances and cast worries astray and the best way was to honor the person and place that day.