Past over Present

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Dart River, Glenorchy, jet boats, Mount Aspiring National Park, moving, New Zealand, parent care, rough spot

In the last 60 days, I’ve traveled a lot, passing through nearly every state from the Midwest to the Southeast to the mid-Atlantic U.S. and back. I flew nearly 5000 miles, drove over 2000, and walked hundreds. It is not the kind of voyage you would be interested in reading about, however. I will simply tell you that it involved a sudden resignation from my job, a frantic apartment search, a sick mother and hospitals and surgery and doctors galore, a snowstorm and canceled flights, 1 ½ days to pack up my life as I know it, and a chronically bleeding dog. Oh, and the crappiest birthday I’ve ever had was in there somewhere (the day the dog decided to pile on, in fact). But let’s not dwell on my two months from hell – let’s go back in the past, to New Zealand, instead!

On the South Island of New Zealand, the Dart River twists and turns, snaking out of Lake Wakatipu and through Mount Aspiring National Park, a collection of massive snow-covered peaks tumbling down into milky blue glacial waters. We leave the small town of Glenorchy aboard a powerful jet boat and fly across the water, mouths agape at the peaks, valleys, and pounding waterfalls surrounding us.

The boat skims the shallow water, bouncing high and eliciting screams of both fear and delight; our stomachs leap and then thud as our driver spins and cuts into his own wake to give us one of the thrills New Zealand is known for. We’ve skipped the bungee jumping and parasailing, so today’s outing is but a taste of Kiwi adventure mania.

An hour or two later, we disembark on the shores of a primeval beech forest and walk single file along a narrow trail into the woods. Our guide recounts the Maori history of the ancient and unspoiled surroundings; the adults listen eagerly while the kids jostle for space on the thin path, raising my heart rate more than the one-man suspended bridge over a 250-foot deep ravine does.

The return trip is no less thrilling. For the four adults and six kids on that ride some fifteen years ago, this was the highlight of our time in the Queenstown area. Mount Aspiring National Park and the Dart River have a brooding, mystical quality (one of the reasons parts of The Lord of the Rings and some Mount Everest movies were filmed here), and the jet boats are a pure high, an adrenaline rush of speed through cloud-muted sunshine and aquamarine waters – the memory a great antidote to my recent low times.

* Good news! Things are looking up. I’ve moved into a new place in Washington, DC, just in time for the advent of spring weather. I’m happily adjusting to urban living, my mom is doing better, and the dog has stopped seeping (don’t ask)!

Ten Feet Out the Door

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family, family travel, gathering, Weekly Photo Challenge

Every few years, our family of five eschews traditional gift-giving at Christmas time. Instead, we gather in some far-off location where we can just be with each other without the distractions of errands, other friends, or holiday madness.

Epidaurus, Greece

Long before we started this tradition, we carted our kids around the world as they were growing up. When I look back now, I can’t imagine how we herded three children under ten (with suitcases) through the radiating streets around the Arc de Triomphe to catch the rush-hour metro. I am in awe of the mere idea of trekking and camping with five teenagers (our three and two friends) on the Inca Trail. I cringe to remember my 6-year-old pushing and shoving with a friend on the edge of a chasm in the Dart River area of New Zealand. And I have photos to document the times we pulled over to capture some striking scenery and ended up with one boy or another watering the local flora on the side of the road. (T alone has sprinkled five continents, I would guess.) Ten feet out the door was not an excursion for the meek; it was a major production and involved the assembling of a lot more than just people. Back then we had to gather passports, inoculation records, tiny backpacks, snacks  – and more often than not, our wits – as we set off for new places.

Serengeti, Tanzania

As the years passed, the kids got busy with activities and college and their own lives, and my husband could never get away as much as I could to travel. I started to travel alone – either completely solo the whole time or just on my own until I met up with a trekking group somewhere. Even as some of my neighbors clucked disapprovingly, I grew to really relish my time alone, and I tried to book at least one and sometimes two trips a year during my work breaks to explore somewhere my husband didn’t care to go.

Iguazu Falls, Argentina

But as much as I enjoy the adventure and peace of wandering the world on my own or in small numbers, the gathering of my brood to travel somewhere new is the greatest gift I can imagine. This year, our gathering spot will be Colombia, and I can’t wait to have our ten feet all together once again!

See some other great takes on the Weekly Photo Challenge here!

Facing Fears

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Conquering fear, Lukla, travel dangers, world's most dangerous airport

I am not a total chicken, but I don’t consider myself the bravest person around either. (Some people in my family might, possibly, even argue I’m a bit of a worrier, maybe.) Travel has presented me with some good challenges, and there have definitely been times I was not at all sure I was up for them. The existence of this post means I have somehow survived all these real and perceived dangers, but the memory of a few of them can still make my hair stand on end years later.

When it comes to nerves on the road, it doesn’t have to be bungee jumping or whitewater rafting to produce a good adrenaline rush sometimes; believe me, I’ve frozen up before my share of foreign subway ticket machines while my train is leaving the station, and it can be daunting just trying to get directions or pump gas in a country where I can’t even read the alphabet!

But danger to life and limb is a different story. The first time I remember really feeling physically shaky was on a zip line in Costa Rica. The zipping itself was a blast, and standing on the platforms between zips was manageable, but there were three platforms from which we had to rappel instead of glide. The idea of that backward step D-O-W-N (that’s 140 feet down!) and the initial drop freaked me out; I was not at all sure using my hand as a brake was really going to slow me down and I pictured quite a splat at the bottom when it didn’t work. It did.

Tight spots and closed-in spaces are another great fear inducer for me. I once got talked into going down into some cenotes in the Yucatan peninsula and swimming down an underground river; to this day, the thought of being in that watery underground cavern makes me shiver. Likewise, crawling through stone tunnels – twice – in Peru made my blood pound as I tried to inch forward, feeling both my back and stomach scraping rock and knowing all too well that I could never turn around if I had to. Just the thought of being closed in gives me nightmares, and being in these claustrophobic situations in real life made me feel sick. I was sure I would be the first person to become paralyzed or trapped inside all those dark tunnels. I wasn’t.

Scary vehicle stories abound in my travels and many others’. From the bouncing, out-of-control rickshaw in Lhasa traffic, to the bus careening around mountain curves in the Balkans, to the Athenian driver who … well, ALL the Athenian drivers … , traveling under someone else’s control can be quite frightening. By far the greatest example of transportation trepidation was a flight from Kathmandu into Lukla, Nepal – the gateway to the hiking trail to Everest.

In the weeks before traveling, I watched way too many Youtube videos of this harrowing flight and by the time I boarded the aging, cramped prop plane, I was terrified out of my mind. For once, everyone on board shared my nervousness and a few morbid jokes took the edge off for the first few minutes. Both take-off and the flight into the Himalaya were smooth enough, but the landing was a big gulp. Trying to hit a 1700-foot long, 65-foot wide runway that starts at the edge of a cliff and slants uphill toward a mountain face at the other end, the pilot deliberately cuts the engine just before touchdown (stall alarm screaming) and slams on the brakes to mercifully end the flight. Before the trip, I had recurring visions of dying on this landing just as a planeload of passengers had a few weeks before. Luckily, I didn’t.

Heights and narrow ledges are another test of my mental strength. I know I am sure-footed and rarely worry that I will misstep, so my fear here is not always a physical one. No, I’m afraid that others will slip and either bump me or make me watch their own flailing deathfalls. On a narrow trail in New Zealand’s Dart River area, with a huge ravine on one side, I was petrified watching my son walk in (what I perceived to be) a careless way through the woods. I kept picturing him tripping and falling off but, of course, he didn’t. At Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park, I did question my own footwork and had the additional fear that one of the heavy chains I was grasping to stay on the ledges might suddenly pull out of the rock. Somehow, it stayed intact this one more time!

If I had to pick my poison? Well, I think I’d take heights and rickety ledges and scary vehicles over anything cramped or subterranean. An avid spelunker or diver I will never be. I’d rather fall off a cliff than get stuck deep in the sea or an extended passageway underground. Just reading articles – heck, just typing these words – about cavers trapped in rain-filled tunnels or deep-sea divers whose ropes get tangled on coral makes me sweat and breathe faster.

Fording fast rivers in Chile. Exiting a chaotic airport in the middle of the night in Kathmandu. Eating a singed guinea pig in Peru. They’ve all required a gut check of some kind or another, but I’ve made it through all of them and learned a little about needless worrying, maybe. “Always do what you are afraid to do,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. I’m trying to take him up on that challenge as often as possible.