time travel

One of the notions that gets my imagination going the most is the idea of having access to a time machine. Where would I go and at what point of time would it be? I actually wouldn't want to be limited by a time machine - I'd want to be able to travel in time just on a whim.

Recently, one of my friends posted a link on Facebook to a website for The Mannahatta Project. Their home page features a picture of what the area that became New York City must have looked like back in the year 1609. It shows a point in time that I wish I could travel back to, perhaps just in spirit, so I could fly and investigate as free as the wind, taking it all in.

I once read a book called The Ohlone Way, by Malcolm Margolin, about the Indian life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area. I found the descriptions of what nature once was in this region wondrous, what with the skies filled with birds and herds of animals below. And the danger, such as bears roaming around. But I'm traveling around as a spirit, right? I don't want to interact, I just want to observe the wild beauty that once existed across our planet, and not see the industry and garbage of modern civilization.

Or I'd go even further back in time to when the Earth was even more untouched by mankind, maybe several thousand years ago. I watched a production on PBS not long ago about the San Francisco Bay region, and how the land once stretched further out to sea, encompassing what are now the Farallon Islands. I'd travel around the world and get to see the species that have since become extinct, even the dodo bird! It'd be so much fun.