Aging My Way
Back in the 1990s, I spent much of my spare time white-water rafting, canoeing, playing tennis, skiing and weekend-road-tripping. So, it wasn’t unusual that I was a fan of Outside Magazine – and its writers.
The wordsmith I enjoyed most, both his magazine articles and his books, was Tim Cahill, whose writing I fell in love with after reading Road Fever. Published in 1991, the book was a face-paced travelogue about Tim’s journey from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in a record-breaking 23 days.
Cahill’s misadventures tickled my funny bones, and I went on to read his Jaguars Ripped my Flesh; A Wolverine is Eating My Legs; Pecked to Death by Ducks; and Lost in my Own Backyard: A Walk in Yellowstone National Park.
According to Tim:
“A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles.”
“The explorer is the person who is lost.”
“An adventure is never an adventure when it happens. An adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility.“
“A constant ongoing joke among the people that I travel with is my absolutely hopeless sense of direction. I’m able to get lost a half an hour from camp. I don’t know how I do this.”
Tim and I have this in common. People who travel with me know that at least once a day, I’m going to be headed in the wrong direction,
Happy reading.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Scamp. She is an avid reader whose mind is always asking questions (many of which are unanswerable), an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for Story Circle Network’s Journal, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
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