I travel for work and for pleasure. I like to bring a camera along wherever I travel; it makes me see even short business trips as new experiences. I love food of all sorts and experiencing new cultures. I always travel solo and occasionally by bicycle.
Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;
Breath’s a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad; when the journey’s over
There’ll be time enough for sleep.
My second day at Petra I got to see some of the main sights in miraculous, wonderful solitude. The first day I’d been harassed by would-be guides and vendors and lost amid throngs of tourists. On my second day, I got to the gate at 6:30, when it opened, and scurried down the Siq to find Petra virtually empty, as if I’d stumbled upon it by accident. I love to talk to others when I travel, but I also like time to reflect and to be alone. Petra is a phenomenal place for that, since it is so stunning that it takes the mind a while to absorb it all. I ate my breakfast atop the Great Temple, then climbed the 800 steps to the monastery where I was one of three people there. I sat on a rock overlooking the Monastery for a long time, absorbing it, imagining it when Petra was a huge and thriving metropolis. It was an amazing day.
I’ve spent several extraordinary days exploring Cappadocia and have been thinking a lot about luck. Luck is a concept where, for me, language falls short.
There is luck in the sense of serendipity, a happy accident, and there is the view that I’ve always subscribed to, as Thomas Jefferson put so well:
“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
For me the two are hopelessly intertwined; the more you extend yourself, the easier it is to stumble happily upon something wonderful, as if by chance. But first, you have to be there.
People tell me all the time how lucky I am to travel to so many outstanding places, and I can only agree wholeheartedly. At the same time, travel is also very challenging, between physical stress, cultural differences, miscommunication and the lack of familiar faces and things. But as with anything, difficulties so often yield great joy. For me, travel has become a microcosm of life, a tool that I use to teach myself to adapt, to learn and to find joy in the most unexpected places.
Today I was hiking behind a village that has cliff dwellings that were occupied until a 1962 earthquake killed several people, when the town moved to the base of the cliff. I was thirsty and lacking sugar, so I thought I’d find a kiosk with something to drink. I did, and quickly several people were talking to me.
Where are you from? America! (pointing) He lived there for 10 years. In California.
10 years? Wow. What part of California?
Um. Not 10 years. 3 months. Not California.
(I think he was in Washington State, but in any case it was nearer to Canada than California.)
Then they asked if I wanted to see the church.
Church?
Yes, the church at the top of the cliff. 6th Century.
And in less than a minute we were off, scrambling over rocks and, later, climbing. Now let me confess here that in spite of my best efforts to the contrary, I am terribly afraid of heights. And yet I’d found myself climbing foothold after handhold behind someone I’d just met, and who spoke very limited English, with no language skills of my own. He kept repeating: 1962. Earthquake. 3 people died.
This was not helping.
Yet when we got to the top, it was the most spectacular place. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, and yet it would have been so easy to miss.
To me, it was just the latest example of serendipity as a result of overcoming so many potential obstacles. A new place, a language barrier, my natural tendency to be shy. But it was also pure, dumb luck.
It is easy to take things for granted and I also realize that I am lucky in a completely serendipitous sense: I was born into a family that taught my to be independent and confident; I grew up speaking English, which so many people have made the effort to learn worldwide; I have the financial resources to go places I choose, and a job that takes me to many other places that I enjoy immensely. I have worked hard to be here, but I have also received many gifts through pure chance.
At this moment I am grateful on all sides, for being here, for all the opportunities I’ve earned and been given, and for the happy chance that happens along the way.
