The last big, Bilbo-Baggins-esque adventure Leah and I had was in the fall of 2007 when we went trekking in the Himalaya of Nepal. For three weeks we hiked and struggled for breath as our guide led us along the trails up into the thin air of the highest mountain range on Earth -- a trip that for me at least was a dream 30 years in the making. As one who has spent his adult life climbing to the mountain summits of the Pacific Northwest, I’d fantasized about what it would be like to one day climb Mt. Everest...but, as the years advanced, the idea of just being in the Himalaya seemed like it’d be pretty damned cool.
And so we went, and the trip was both more difficult than we’d ever imagined it could be, but also way more rewarding. For nearly the entire three weeks of the trek, one or both of us was miserably and even frightfully sick with one malady or another, and, if you read the journals we kept, we spent a lot of time wanting only to be back home. Still, we realize now, through the clear vision of hindsight, how much those difficult days taught us, how rich the experience was, and we’re talking about what we might do for our Next Big Trip.
“The world is big, and life is short,” a friend of ours says, and Leah and I have settled on India as our likely next destination, with a side trip back to Nepal (to revisit friends we made in 2007.) We know India will challenge us and probably give us a hard push out of our comfort zones.
Here at home yesterday, I photographed our son’s dog as he enjoyed a morning in the sunshine, watching bugs. Another day I got down on the ground and did up-close pictures of one of my favorite wildflowers, bleeding hearts.
Each day, wherever it is that we find ourselves, there is something to see...but, for most of us, sometimes a trip away offers a needed reminder to keep our eyes open.
