The outside world, too big for one poem?

Peggy has posted today's challenge for our poem-a-day month at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.
She asks us to write about "outside" — whatever that word means to us — and has posted two lovely photos, one of the mountains in Yosemite National Park and one of the beach at Big Sur, California.

Lindy cooling at the coulee

Just as I was about to sit down to respond to Peggy's challenge, our dog barked, wanting to go outside.
Outside can be, to some people, their own back yard, as it is to our dog Lindy, or it can be the streets and sidewalks of their own town or city. Lindy is equally happy walking with my husband to the nearby coulee to see possible wildlife, or walking to the post office to see friendly people. She doesn't care about picking up the mail.

Our back yard

For myself, I think about the world we've seen outside my own comfort zone. It isn't always easy visiting faraway parts of the world, but it is always interesting, and it is often exciting.

As my blog title implies, this started off to be a travel blog, so let's take a look at the outside world and see if it inspires me to versify.

Got on board an eastbound 747,
though it seems to me
I've used that line before,
but I guess it doesn't matter
I've just got to get at 'er
and show you what
the outside means to me.

We saw Paris in the springtime,
and cruised the Rhine and Danube
in the fall
when I was very sickly
and couldn't move as quickly
as my husband so I stayed aboard
the ship 'most all the time,
but I saw the Danube
and the Rhine,
with castles on the top of every hill.
I saw them,
and the memory's with me still.

Even when I went alone
across Canada by train
and almost missed
the sights of Montreal
for reasons of unruly health again:
I went there, and I did it,
I rested when needs must,
and left a piece of my heart 
on the bold east coast.

Though I grumble and cavil
and most likely always will,
if opportunity is
offered once again,
to the outside world I'll go,
in rain or shine or snow,
just to see what lies beyond that hill.

Kay Davies, 2013,
but don't quote me on that promise.

At Toronto train station

Above: France; Germany;

Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia; Switzerland. 

Visitor in our front yard

Costa Rica (Dick, on right)

Alaska

Baja, Mexico

Dominican Republic

Dick in China

Florida

Rome

Russia

Spain

The Netherlands

Galapagos Islands

Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan

Ecuador

Hawaii

Gulf Islands, British Columbia

Quintana Roo, Mexico

                                                                                     

Photos:
Kay Davies & Richard Schear