Sure! I answered a request to write a travel column for an unfortunately named publication. It is about how we still harbour a teenager mentality inside these weathered physical exterior shells, Earl J. explained, less eloquently than I have put it, of course.
So I sit down and bang out a prize-worthy essay on how Many Trips as a nom de plume fits me in so many ways, and how the concept of “trips” has grown from simply travel to personal exploration to virtual and real fails and falls as the pandemic changes my life. And I crumple it up and toss it across the room. It bores me, and besides, it doesn’t have anything to do with being a teenager trapped in an aging body.
I retreat to my favourite venue for solving problems: the mountain trails to the west of Calgary.
The chickadees greet me with a chorus celebrating the warm spring day as I arrive at the trailhead. The sun-dappled meadows are speckled with crocus flowers peeking through the brown grass at me as I walk into the aspen forest. The remnant snow patches, hiding in the deep woods, exhale a cold remembrance of winter’s last fading grip.
I climb the hillside and find a log to sit upon with a view across the rolling hills to the mountain front clothed in a dazzling new raiment of fresh snow. My eye follows the procession of peaks heading south, naming those I remember, noting others to look up. As I shift on the log, my back complains, reminding me that today is a recovery day and of the short walk I promised myself. Maybe I should catalogue my various ailments and dazzle readers with my usual practice of ignoring them, I consider. Or perhaps the theme should be wisdom gained from clinging to mountainsides, life and limb protected by a thin strand of rope. No, no, no – the idea is the teenager within, I remind myself.
The expansive view hijacks my train of thought and inspires me to think of trips ahead and adventures to continue. I mull over the reasonableness of trying to mountain bike across B.C. this spring, kayaking Georgian Bay in the summer, or canoeing in the fall. I think of the After Times and plans to continue my interrupted walk across Europe, sail across the Atlantic, and visit a small village in Cambodia.
The cool breeze blows a thought into my head: my travel dreams as a teenager and those today are different only in being tempered by experience. I no longer want to drag myself out of a tent at midnight and stumble upwards through arctic cold dark, with the thin air raking my lungs, to watch a golden sunrise illuminate an ocean of peaks. The draw of riding a horse across the Mongolian desert, my thighs chafed and aching, the metallic smell of dust and horse-sweat enfolding me as I spy a yurt to spend the night, has paled. I am wiser now, cognizant of physical limits and uninterested in unnecessary hardships. Or maybe not.😜
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