Where Adventure and Home Meet

I love adventure. The idea of hanging on a rope between heaven and earth, holding onto nothing but steep, slick rocks delights me. I like to go far into the wilderness, sleep in a tent, discover new paths, light a campfire, and shiver as I bravely slide into a freezing lake. The lake especially is a challenge, because I don’t like to be cold, but the exhilaration I feel swimming surpasses most of my life’s greatest joys.

At the same time, I am a home body. I dislike leaving my routine. I’m not flexible in uncomfortable situations, and I like to have my own way. I get upset if I don’t have space to write, and I‘m attached to my quiet morning time eating and reading. I easily get overwhelmed and anxious in unfamiliar places, and if I don’t eat on time or enough I can get moody, headachy and unpleasant.

Paradoxical me, living with a dual temperament in one body, with one part that craves excitement and danger, and another that requires safety and routine. An odd combination, seemingly impossible to bridge. And yet, somehow, I have been straddling these lines for forty years, exploring the world’s wild places but also making myself a home where, despite the abundance of wildlife and trails all around, I rarely set foot outside.

Adventure is where I challenge who I believe I am. Sometimes I discover that I am capable of so much more than I thought, and other times I smash into a wall of limitations and weaknesses. When I climbed Mount Shasta five years ago, I leaped over the barriers of cold wind and darkness and found within myself the strength to keep moving and the knowledge that I can reach the summit. When I first arrived at Paradise to climb Mount Rainier, only a few months later that year, I grew overwhelmed by fears and found myself declaring defeat and retreating home without even trying.

In Kauai a few months ago, my creativity blossomed. Nothing, not heavy rain or Dar’s disability at the time could mar my enjoyment of the island. I wrote. I ran. I swam. I had endless patience to walk with Dar as he hobbled along on his crutches. But on Roatan, a Honduran island with every promise of heaven, I felt trapped, stressed and unable to handle any of the discomforts of the trip. Nothing, not our beautiful rented house, the promise of kayaking, or the glorious jungle could relieve the tension headache from hell that I had.

Perhaps it is time for me to stop defining success in adventure by whether I followed through with my plans and start appreciating that I left on adventure in the first place. I travel into the world, secure in the knowledge that I can always return home, my safe base from which I can challenge myself farther and to which I can return to lick any bruises to my courage. Like a baby who peeks out of her mother’s skirts, testing the waters. That’s how I am.

All You Need Is Love

I am feeling happy today. I have many reasons to be happy, but I think that might be true almost every day, but today I am happy for no particular reason. Not giddy happy. Not high happy. Just pleasantly happy, enjoying the patterns of clouds in the skies, the warm sun, my daughter’s little body in the giant jacket we borrowed from her brother, and my son’s lovely face as he proudly explained to yet another group about broken bones (Human Body Symposium this morning).

I am happy because I love and feel loved. I feel healthy and strong and grateful for the health of my loved ones. I feel happy because I am writing to you about love and how to express love, and I realize that just thinking about this subject fills me with a joy of life.

Giving love, I know, increases happiness. Feeling grateful increases happiness. I want my son, my daughter, my boyfriend, my parents and siblings, my entire huge family to feel secure in the knowledge that I love them. And I want to show them love with more than just words. Sometimes it’s nice to show love when the object of it doesn’t expect it. A hug, a kiss, a squeeze can mean so much.

From Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project I learned to wake up my daughter with a song. Eden is often grumpy in the mornings, but I noticed that when I sing for her, her little face, her cheeks puffy with sleep, lights up, and she opens her eyes to the morning with happiness and joy, secure with the knowledge of my love.

At eleven, my son is a little more reluctant to hug and kiss, but every once in a while he cuddles up to me. He leans his head on my shoulder and just sighs. I find little ways to show my love: making his favorite cheddar cheese bread sticks. Buying him those jello containers he likes. Telling him I love him. Coming to events in his class. Listening when he plays his two instruments. Accepting his little gestures of love.

Gretchen Rubin chose as one of her keys to feeling happier to “hug more, kiss more, touch more.” With the kids, with Dar, my parents and even with the dogs this is great advice! This morning I sat with Chaim, my alpha dog, and I petted him for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, just him and I. The result: I felt quieter, calmer and happier. And if a dog can make me feel so much love, how much better with every hug or kiss from the children and Dar!

So today I feel happy, and I wanted to share the love with you. I hope you can find someone (appropriate) to hug today. Share a kiss with your loved ones. Get that amazing feeling of completeness with someone, human, cat a dog. I wish you a love day, love week and love year. And please remember to spread the love to everyone you hold dear. (Hey! That rhymed!)