It can be a real adventure ... having a life.

  Sedona!

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The headline for this blog is a quote from "The World According to Garp." It has always stuck with me. And now, as I pursue adventure after adventure through travel, I often find myself smiling.

The whole idea of pursuing adventure through travel got stuck in my head when I was a kid. In fact, I wanted be an international journalist (thank you, All the President's Men).  I wanted to report from Russia and travel the world. 

Life had other plans, of course. I had a great career in journalism, politics, public relations and nonprofit leadership. And, in a move NO ONE would have ever predicted, I took about a decade off to be home with the kids when they were little.   So this affected the travel budget, as you could imagine. 

I didn't really start pursuing the travel dreams until the kids were done with school. Since then, I have been to Paris, Rome, Venice, Florence, Prague, Lisbon, Seville, Vienna, Salzburg and too many other cities to name.  I have done a roadtrip down the coast to the Redwood Forest, driven through the national parks in Utah and Colorado, drove up the East Coast to Maine and done many, many hikes.  One of the greatest blessings in my life has been how much I have been able to travel in the last seven years. And a couple of times, I traveled with my daughters! 

 (me on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon)

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Now that I am a college faculty member at the University of Washington (another lifelong dream that came true!), I look forward with great joy each year to the Public Interest Communications Summer Institute.  This is a gathering of people I have come to adore. They are professors from Florida, Texas, Minnesota, California and more. And year after year we meet to talk about issues facing our field, grapple with things like the decline of trust in higher education, etc.  And, we connect with old friends.  I always build a trip around it, and this year we met in Phoenix.

 At the wonderful Tlaquepaque Village in Sedona

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Sure, the trip was not seamless. I lost my suitcase (more on that in my earlier blog...). That really challenged my resilient spirit.  But I survived and saw amazing places, including the Grand Canyon, spectacular Sedona, the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert and even Winslow, Arizona (and if you don't know why I visited there, I urge you to listen to The Eagles singing Take It Easy.)  I even squeezed in a Scottsdale visit to my old boss/friend Elaine Zielinski, whom I worked for in the federal government 30 years ago. 

What a trip.  

I keep thinking of those studies that show people stop traveling when they age. It becomes overwhelming, too challenging for some.  I have a lot of traveling to catch up on. I have many miles to go before I sleep. And I love every mile.

 (me with Elaine Zielinski, who ran the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Oregon/Washington office at the start of my career, way before women rose to success very often in land management agencies. She was a great boss. More importantly, she and I are still friends.) 

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And as I hang at the airport in Phoenix, waiting to go home to my little island, I find myself thinking of things like:

- gathering with dear friends and mentors and talking about how to be a better professor in these challenging times;

- sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon in a hastily purchased Target t-shirt (thank you for the challenge, American Airlines!), laughing outloud because I finally made it there, regardless of the lack of a suitcase;

- looking at the spectacular red rocks of Sedona, which photos cannot adquately capture, knowing I will be back again;

- going to Winslow, Arizona, visiting the abandoned car on Route 66, checking out the Petrified Forest, seeing the adorable town of Jerome and its "ghost town" and other fun sidetrips.

 "Well, I'm a-standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and such a fine sight to see. It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me."

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Truly, Jenny in The World According to Garp was correct. And here's the whole quote:  "The thing is... to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure... having a life."

I might not be a foreign correspondent.  But I am definitely covering some ground!

See you on my next trip!