It Isn’t An Adventure If Nothing Goes Wrong

Our inability to get to Berlin became insignificant very quickly. At this moment, the morepressing question is how and when will we manage to go home.We listen to the BBC each morning for the latest news on how long flights will remain cancelled, which countries are affected by the ashy plume of volcanic debris, and the various speculations of experts and authorities about how this is going to play out. Those speculations can be summed up in two words: nobody knows.

Meanwhile, thousands of travelers are stranded at airports, and the personal and economic impacts of a protracted disruption of international travel are staggering, its effects cascading each day. As I write this, aviation authorities are being pressuredto lift the ban and have been criticized for over-reacting, but when it comes to flying, I think most of us prefer extreme caution. Anyway, it’s been surreal, and I feel as though I am caught up in some huge and unlikely chain of events. What’s really boggling my mind, though, is what a powerful reminder this is that we are all interconnected, that nature is boss, and we aren’t as smart as we like to think we are.

Despite the uncertainty that looms ahead, Monte and I are among the lucky ones. While responsibilities do await us at home, we have a little more maneuverability than some, and we are grounded in a user-friendly place with people we love. On Friday our friends Jill and Peter rescued us and took us to Waterperry Gardens just outside of Oxford, where we walked about the grounds of a beautiful old estate, marveled at a hundred-year-old orange tree from Spain, and had tea by a green meadow in the late afternoon sunlight. It's amazing what a garden, a friend, and a cup of tea can do for one's morale.

Yesterday we took a train to London and spent much of the day at the British Museum. I looked at prehistoric tools and cuneiform tablets and tiny clay amphorae carried on long-ago pilgrimages. I stood before Egyptian mummies and gazed into the dark eyes of portraits on panels once attached to wooden coffins, wondering about the real life people they depicted. And of course I could not help but think of my own life in geological and historical context, a perspective that makes me feel small and fleeting indeed. But I jotted down these words, attributed to a harpist from 1400 B.C.: Follow your heart while you’re alive. Put perfume on your head. Clothe yourself with fine linen…Make holiday and don’t tire of it!

I am a bit tired, though, and I’ve picked up a bad cold, and I am feeling discombobulated and off balance. I have come to see that vacation and travel are not the same things. Vacation, I think, is about resting and refreshing. Travel, on the other hand, involves forfeiting routine, adapting to change, and enduring discomfort in the interest of experience. It’s about paying attention and figuring things out, being open and flexible, negotiating with the world. Sometimes it's the simple pang of missing your own familiar bed, or of wanting to shut down entirely but not being able to do so, which is how I felt last night. And I’m not complaining, even if it sounds like I am. Well, maybe I'm just whining a little, but that's mostly because I am sick, and I admit this whole volcanic ash cloud thing has been hovering over everything, literally and metaphorically.

Travel also has its great rewards, of course, and I hope to do more of it in the future -- there’s so much world I have not seen! But we chose to come to England to spend time with our daughter, and we’ve had more time with her than we expected and gotten asense of her everyday life.

We've also been reminded not to count on things to work out precisely according to plan. As a friend of ours is fond of saying, "It isn't an adventure if nothing goes wrong." So I guess this is an adventure.

And now it’s time to fold up the sofa bed and pick up a rental car. We’re driving north to the country. For a bit of vacation.