“Just buy the ticket” is the way I ended the video segment in my Serendipities Abound post.
I did a lot of planning and preparation to start traveling after Mary Ann died. I booked my spots in the huts on the Milford and Kepler Tracks far in advance, as I was warned they would fill quickly. I could have bailed on the trip without losing too much if I decided not to go at the last minute. Those bookings were not terribly expensive.
The plane ticket was another matter. Once that ticket was purchased it would be a done deal. I am too frugal to waste almost $2,000 dollars. That is easily over the price of apprehensions’ threshold.
This is Nike's “Just do it” life philosophy.
My approach has been to take small steps first: asking someone who has done the crazy thing to tell me about their experience. Then tiny steps, checking on the venue, telling people I’m thinking about doing something… purchasing the equipment, paying for training sessions, swimming and horseback riding lessons brought me closer to the threshold of making it happen. It all accumulated into an incentive not to bail, which brought me closer to having the courage to buy the ticket.
The more people I tell, the greater the cost of bailing out on it. Hearing “I thought you were going to New Zealand” is the unbearable price of bailing.
Once the ticket was in hand, the decision was made. I could be as ambivalent and apprehensive as I needed to be between then and boarding the plane, but bailing out was no longer an option. The price of doing so was, literally, too high.
The above description is real. It is what happened. It is how I actually did something I had not imagined possible before facing the emptiness created by the end of a career and the loss of Mary Ann.
It is also a template for taking any step in a new direction, into unfamiliar territory, out of that comfortable place that is begins to feel a bit like a trap. The fear is real, but so is the magnificence of life on the other side of the fear. Yes, mortality is real, but so is life.
Mortality punched me in the gut when Mary Ann left. After a time of wishing it would finish the job by taking me too, I chose life. Not every step in a new direction is as dramatic as that was for me. Some of the hardest such steps are smaller ones that barely seem worth taking, but must be taken to move into life rather than simply filling time while waiting for the end to finally arrive.
What comes next here are some of the experiences that confirm the wisdom of the choice I made almost fourteen years ago. I can’t know how things would have gone had I made different choices then. What I do know is that the life I have lived since buying that ticket has been filled with more than I ever dreamed possible.
There have been terrifying moments, exhilarating moments, ordinary moments and extraordinary moments. I have fallen in like with more people than I can count, I have said goodbye to them and grieved their loss, and I have gotten to keep some of them as friends.
To be specific:
On the top of McKinnon Pass when hiking the Milford Track, strong winds filled with tiny ice pellets blew me over, backpack and all, as I walked a narrow path on the side of the mountain with no one in sight.
I survived. More than that, I felt victorious.
Days later, I was walking another narrow path on Mount Luxmore (the Kepler Track), coming down from the peak when a grief burst hit. My tears brought me peace, knowing that Mary Ann remains as a part of who I am. I took that peace with me as for hours I walked a ridge above the clouds.
My horse ran away with me while riding in the rocky Snowy Mountains of Australia. I knew that if I came off onto those rocks I would be badly hurt, and later that evening I almost fell off a log in laughter at myself as we sat around the campfire.
When I slid into the gray swells of the ocean at the Great Barrier Reef, I was more terrified than I have ever been in my life. The salt water wicked through my mask, covered my mustache, then flowed into the back of my throat, causing me to choke. Later when dropped on a key in another spot in the ocean, I relaxed and floated over a beautiful scene beneath. I returned to the boat, again, feeling victorious.
I got on a small bus in Shannon, Ireland, as six quiet strangers and I visited the Burren, the Cliffs of Moher, and Galway Bay on a somber and dreary day under gray skies with a chilly rain falling. The threatening looking and feeling Cliffs of Moher, the barren stony landscape of the Burren, with an ancient Dolman, a portal tomb, added to the sort of “Waiting for Godot” existential sense of emptiness. I left wanting to come back on a Spiritual Retreat to spend time with the uncluttered core of who it is that lives inside this aging body.
I walked The Coast Path in Cornwall with Lisa and Micah, spending time together, just the three of us without Mary Ann. The healing power of the ocean wind holding up Kestrels above us, and the visual salve of ocean on one side and fresh green paddocks on the other freed us to celebrate her presence in laughter as we joked about what she might say to the convergence of Brown Willy (a hill we had just climbed), the Blue Peter restaurant in Polperro, and the famous Spotted Dick dessert.
Walking the Camino and making friends for many years now with Dragan and his sister Tanja resulted in adding to my extended family. Tanja has visited me in the USA, and I have spent many weeks with her and her husband Sebastian in a village near Frankfurt. Just days ago Dragan was ordained as a Serbian Orthodox priest.
An hour standing at Cruz de Ferro, one of the highest points on the Camino, brought thoughts of my family and friends throughout the years, those still on the planet and those having left. Endorphins washed throughout my brain and body after a rapid climb to another high point on the Camino with green hills in front of me extending to the horizon, an unforgettable exhilarating moment.
In a hostel I found out about a one thousand voice choir Singalong to be held in Vienna two years later. I sang a Schubert Mass in that choir at the Konzerthaus there, where I met Lorenz and Beatrix with whom I stayed for a month in Helmstedt, Germany last year.
On that trip to Vienna I met and bonded with a group of people in a month-long German class. Claudia from that class, who also visited me in the US, remains among my best friends and confidants to this day.
On the Camino I found out about the choirs in Estonia and ended up at an international choral competition there. The choral singing was heavenly and my heart sang along with the choirs from other places on the earth.
I traveled to Tobermory, Scotland, sat on a hillside gazing through the trees at a channel of the bay drifting between the mountains and disappearing into the mist. There I made peace with my mortality.
I met the Sillars’ family of six on a train platform traveling as I am now, and got to follow all of them watching their then precocious eleven year old Grace, their oldest, grow into a thriving university student.
Bjørg from the Camino invited me to spend a week with her and her husband at their home in Oslo, showing me around the city when I traveled there a few years later. Gary and Rowena from the Camino hosted me for a week in Gympie, Australia taking me on a picnic at a remote beach where I got to do four-wheeling for the first time.
Then there is Lawrie and his family in Canberra, Australia. He has become almost like a younger brother, introducing me to his Cricket buddies during my last visit there.
These mini-stories are only glimpses of the results of buying the ticket. They are bits and pieces of what now diminishes the fears and apprehensions when I am planning future trips. They are what lay on the other side of the fear. They are some of the priceless benefits of choosing life. That step has led me to discoveries about who I am, nurtured hope for the future through meeting good people from so many different places on the planet, and it has opened my eyes to the wonder of this magnificent Universe, filled with the stardust of which we are all made.
Thanks for your inspirational writing. It gives us all courage to take a step and overcome our fears. Life is meant to be lived and shared!
I love reading your tales. NEW ZEALAND! I'm thrilled you started there.