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A year ago at this time I posted a list of 10 things I was looking forward to in 2008. Before I look ahead to 2009, I thought it would be fun to see how each of those things from 2008 turned out.
1. Ethan’s first birthday. This was as amazing and magical as I’d imagined. I’m looking forward to his second birthday with even more enthusiasm!
2. The New England Patriots Invitational Tournament. Also known as the NFL Playoffs, this one didn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped or expected. But ah well, 18-1 is almost as good as 19-0. Right? Nah, not really. Alas.
3. Getting healthy. Sadly, this one’s still a work in progress.
4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In a word: Awesome.
5. Easter Island. I did indeed make it to Easter Island last March, and it was a great experience. Lingering health issues were kind of a drag on the trip, though, and I would much rather have traveled there with Penny and Ethan than go solo like I did.
6. Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The Spidey comics went from monthly to three times a month and featured an all-new, all-not-married status quo for Peter Parker. And, by and large, it was a great year for the character. I’m still jazzed about the series as we head into year two of the new era.
7. Creating… something. Last year was to be the one where I finally made some headway on either Rise of the Hidden Sun or my young adult novel. I chose the novel and managed to get about 45,000 words into it before losing steam around Thanksgiving. So, not a success but not an out-and-out failure, either. A work in progress.
8. New TV shows. I was really looking forward to Jericho (returning from the dead) and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Jericho only lasted seven episodes but tied up most of the loose ends nicely, and Terminator started well, then got a bit spotty before coming on very strong here in season two. Here’s hoping for a season three pickup in 2009.
9. The Red Sox in Japan. Wow, I completely forgot this even happened. It was a neat little sideshow at the time but, ultimately, not all that big a deal. I’m more likely to remember the Sox losing game 7 of the ALCS than anything about their time in Japan.
10. Climbing a mountain. This finally happened in October during our vacation to Acadia National Park. It was a wimpy little mountain, but the views were spectacular and it felt grea to be back outdoors. Maybe 2009 will be the year where I finally get back into hiking the way I’d like to, though.
Here’s one more picture of Ethan from our Acadia vacation. I finally got around to downloading it from my cell phone. It’s pretty low-res, but I still think he’s super cute.
Signage
Our Cabin
Mother Knits a Scarf
View of Sommes Sound from the Top of Acadia Mountain
Fall Foliage, Up Close and Personal
Beech Mountain Trail
Bah Hahbah at Low Tide
Brrrrrrr! It Gets Cold In Maine
Throwing Rocks at Eagle Lake
Ethan on the Rocks
Penny at Thunder Hole
Ethan Models His Jaunty Cap
Homeward Bound
We’re off to Maine for a week at a rental cottage just outside of Acadia National Park. Pray for warm weather—these cabins don’t have heat. Talk to you in about nine or ten days!
Where: Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland, England
When: July 2003
What: Two thousand years ago, a 10-foot-tall and 70-mile-long stone wall loomed over the undulating hills of northern England, built at the order of the Roman Emperor Hadrian to keep the savage Scots from raiding and pillaging Roman territory to the south. Today, the remains of Hadrian’s Wall form the largest ancient structure in all of Northern Europe. This photo shows the path alongside the wall as it winds toward a series of crags called the Nine Nicks of Thirlwall, seen here in the distance towering above the pond.
Here’s how I described the experience of walking here in one of my American Adventurer columns from last year: “A ragged mist swallows the rolling hills and checkerboard farmland ahead of me. An icy wind whips at the hood of my jacket. I’m alone today, a solitary hiker following in the footsteps of history, and this is just what I came for: a bleak and breezy walk along the ruined skeleton of England’s most impressive ancient monument.”
I’ve never been wholly satisfied with that description, though. I think it’s because I wasn’t able to use my column to talk about why I really chose this walk. I mean, who among SmarterTravel’s bargain hunting readers would actually care about the personal crisis I was going through in 2003?
But here I can talk about it all I want, and this is what I wanted to say: I was at a crossroads in my life in the summer of ‘03, and Hadrian’s Wall is one of the places I went in search of the proper road to take next. Penny and I were separated and I was living on my own for the first time since college. I took six weeks off from work and went to Europe that summer to find myself, and I was drawn to Hadrian’s Wall because it gave me the opportunity to take long, solitary walks in the moody countryside near the Scottish border.
There was something wonderfully anonymous about “following in the footsteps of history.” I took comfort in the idea that 2,000 years ago there might have been someone else standing near that wall, feeling homesick and confused, and wondering what to do with his life. It helped me keep my own problems in perspective. Melodramatic, probably, but it is what it is.
Anyone who knows me today knows that Penny and I eventually got back together, moved to Cambridge for two years and then to Beverly, where we now own a house and have started a family. But back in 2003 that outcome seemed improbable at best.
This is the trek that began the long process of helping me work through what was going on in my heart, and I think I’ll always look back on it with a kind of bittersweet nostalgia. It wasn’t a straight line from there to reconcilation, after all, and things would only get worse between us before they’d eventually get better.
So yeah, bittersweet, for sure. But it was still a hell of a walk.
Quietly, and with little fanfare here on the blog, I’ve reinvented the adventure column I started writing for SmarterTravel and USA Today way back in 2004. As of this month, The American Adventurer will focus on deals and discounts rather than destination-focused travelogues. (Those I’ll save for my freelance work.) Here’s a snippet from the first installment in this periodic new series.
The morning mist clears high in the Peruvian Andes, and at last you see it: Machu Picchu. You’re sweaty, you’re muddy, you’re tired—and you couldn’t be happier. You’ve arrived after four hard days of hiking, and while you know there are all kinds of ways to see this fabled lost city, you’re sure now that there’s only one way to really earn it. What’s adventure travel all about, you wonder, if not putting everything you’ve got into reaching your goal?
Well, maybe not everything. You, after all, paid hundreds less than everyone else in your group for the right to reach Machu Picchu, because you knew that some adventure travel operators offer big discounts on “late availability” departures: scheduled trips that still have spaces available.
It’s not a new concept in the travel industry—airlines have been doing it for years—but last-minute discounts are still a relatively untapped source of savings for most adventure travelers. This year, why not skip that boring “staycation” and consider one of these great deals instead?
Read the rest, including the five deals I picked out this month, here.
Last Sunday we packed up the car and headed west to the Berkshires for a good old-fashioned Griswald family vacation. We spent a week in a tiny little cabin at the Mohawk Trail State Forest, six of us in all, and had a wonderful time.
The six of us were: me, Penny, Ethan, our nephew Tyler, and Penny’s mom and dad. There was hiking, swimming, kayaking, reading, card games, campfires, and roasted marshmallows. Lots and lots of roasted marshmallows.
I was also able to take a week off from the actual writing of my novel and instead play around with some plot issues that have been giving me fits lately. The resulting solution—arrived at during one of those wonderful Eureka moments sometime late Saturday night/Sunday morning—helped me fix a story element that’s been bugging me for a long time. So, it was fun and productive.
And now here are the pictures.
The stowaway
Our cozy cabin
Penny and the hiker baby
Ents
No more monkeys jumping on the bed!
Water baby
Flower child
A savage Tylerbeeste
One of the locals
… I was freezing my ass off in Iceland.
Love that icy water
Even colder than it looks
A good time was had by all
Happy Fourth of July!
Just got my advance copy of Britain and Ireland’s Best Wild Places from Penguin UK. It’s a gorgeous doorstopper of a book with photos and descriptions of 500 of the most spectacular places in the United Kingdon.
This is the kind of book I’d want to own even if one of my photos weren’t featured. Fortunately, that’s a moot point because the editors selected this photo from my Tuesday Traveler series for the entry on Skellig Michael.
Learn more about the book at Penguin’s website or Amazon UK. There’s also an article about the book over at the Guardian UK’s website, and they used my Skellig photo in one of their online slideshows, too.
I almost feel famous.
Where: Lookout Mountain, Tennessee
When: September 2005
What: Yep, that’s me hang gliding 2,000 feet above Tennessee. I’m flying tandem with an instructor from Lookout Mountain Flight Park about 20 minutes from downtown Chattanooga.
There are at least two ways to launch a hang glider. One is to climb to the top of a mountain and jump off the edge at a full run. The other—and this is the approach I took—is to tie your glider to the back of an airplane with a long bungy-like rope. When the plane takes off, so do you. Once you’re a couple thousand feet in the air you let go and float gently to the ground like a leaf on the wind. All in all, a thrilling yet mildly terrifying experience.
Things you can’t see in this picture: 1) The Vulcan death grip I’m employing on the crossbar, and 2) The wide-eyed exhilaration on my face. This is probably not something I’ll ever do again, but I am happy I did it at least once. Happier still that I lived to tell the tale.
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