Everywhere! I want to go everywhere!
I want to see places and animals and… well… everything.
It’s a really basic desire. I think everyone longs for adventure and excitement at some point in their life, except the Jedi of course. The difference tends to be in the kind of adventure and excitement we long for. Some of us watched Indiana Jones a few too many times in our youth (and adulthood). We want to see and explore the mysteries of long ago and maybe even punch a few bad guys, even if Dr. Jones himself said that the majority of all archeology takes place in a library and not in exotic locales. Others love art and museums and the sound of heels on cobblestone streets. Their adventures are to beautiful cities with chic nightclubs and statues and perhaps getting swept up into an intriguing romantic subplot. Or some dream of deep blue oceans and white sand beaches, feeling the rock of a boat beneath their feet.
Sometimes, I fall into every possible category. Choosing places to go and things to see is a near impossible task. A few months ago, I received a catalog in the mail from a tour company I like to travel through. I sat down to go through it and ended up folding down 40 pages of the 60 page catalog for future perusal.
I want to go everywhere!
So, I have started considering what my priorities are when it comes to traveling.
Regular readers of this blog will remember that I have a chronic pain condition. I got really sick a few years ago and spent several months enduring invasive doctor’s appointments and procedures to assess whether or not I had a specific kind of ovarian cancer. I didn’t, fortunately. Around the same time, I watched a woman with a debilitating disease struggle to see all of the places she wanted to see before she would not be able to anymore. Those are hard situations to look at and then realize that time and ability can easily slip away, but because of those things my priorities for traveling in general and the places that I am choosing to travel to.
As a rule, I try to travel one new place every year, whether I have people to travel with or not. I’ve been using a tour company for most of my traveling because it allows me to make payments over the course of a few months (23 for my Egypt tour at the end of 2022) and to make my mom feel a little less trepidation about my intrepitude That is one priority that I have set. If I want to travel, then I am going to travel. We shouldn’t wait for the right time or the right person to travel with or anything else. If you want to do something, you should do it. I want to go everywhere, so I’m going to.
The other change in my travel priorities is where I try to go and when. I honestly do not know how able I will be at any point in the future. Two years ago I was able to hike Rainbow Mountain with a burst cyst. I don’t know if I will be strong enough to do that two years from now. So, I have put the trips that will be harder on my body on my “travel short list.” I’ll do things like Paris or tropical cruises later. First, I am going after the difficult adventures.
So, without any further exposition, here is my list of the next five adventures I want to go on.
1) Iceland.
COVID hit the world pretty hard this year and I know that I am fortunate that my only real loss from it was that the trip to Iceland I had planned to take had to be postponed for a year, which pushes back all of my life plans but whatever.
I was supposed to go to Iceland this year because I want to see the Northern Lights. I know that Iceland in December is going to be cold and that I will have to endure a few things that are difficult, in order to see everything that Iceland has to offer.
2) Israel, Jordan, and Egypt
I never really got over my childhood desire to be an archeologist, even though I chose to pursue other passions. It’s why I love the Indiana Jones movies, Tomb Raider, and The Mummy. I love stories about people exploring history. That’s why I was so desperate to go to Machu Picchu and see one of the world’s mysteries. And it is why I am so stoked to go to the Middle East.
There is also a strange poetry to me, being in Jerusalem at age 33 and being in Bethlehem at Christmas time, which is when I will be there. See, I was 30 years old when I felt like God was asking me to take on a position of leadership in a ministry, which is the same age Jesus was when he started his ministry. I like the poetry of being in Jerusalem 3 years later and seeing the culmination of that ministry. Please don’t get me wrong, I do not think I am Jesus, I just really like that thought. I like knowing that I will be seeing those important places at the same age and maturity that Jesus had been at.
I’m also stoked (STOKED!) to see Petra, the pyramids, and the ruins of the temple. If I had become an archeologist, this would have been the region I would have studied, like every other girl who never got over her Egypt phase.
3) Kenya, Tanzania (Serengeti and Mount Kilimanjaro)
I was never particularly good at Biology or the other sciences, but I think that if I had, I would have eventually gone into animal conservation. That is another career dream that I never really got over even though I chose to pursue other passions instead. If I believed in the ever expanding universe (in which the universe splits every single time any single person makes a choice) I would say that there is a universe out there somewhere in which I am traveling the world as a zoologist, or I’m working in one of the preserves in Africa. I don’t know. What I do know is that I love animals, I am fascinated by zoology and I would love to go to Africa and see these creatures in the Serengeti. And, I am going to.
The other reason why I want to go back to Africa is to summit Mount Kilimanjaro. On that list of EVERYTHING that I want to see and do is a sublist of mountains I want to climb. I want to hike (preferably summit) a mountain in all of the major mountain ranges and I’m including in that the major stand alone peaks. Kilimanjaro is the tallest point in Africa. I want to climb it.
4) Antarctica
Okay, what adventurer in the world does not want to go to Antarctica? We all want to see that 7th continent, even if it is just a barren wasteland. I have plans to do this one in nine years. Big plans.
5) China
This is one of the only things on my list that I don’t have plans for or a timeline of when I am going to do it. The problem is, I don’t actually know how to accomplish what I specifically want to do. I want to hike the length of the Great Wall. Man, that would be cool. I just don’t know how to actually manage that. When I do and I develop an actual plan, it is going to be great!
Well, that’s five out of the list of EVERYWHERE that I want to go. I can’t wait to see the rest.