What a Year

Yesterday was Thursday.

Shirley and I woke aboard the M.S. Borealis in Vigo, Spain, had breakfast and took an excursion to nearby Pontevedra.

There were pilgrims everywhere, many of them young, carrying backpacks and walking the Portuguese Way of the Camino de Santiago.

People have been walking toward Santiago de Compostela for more than a thousand years.

For a little while, we walked it too.

Then we returned to Vigo.

We had a few hours before we needed to be back on the ship and didn't have any particular plans, so we walked around until we found a little restaurant with tables outside.

We sat not knowing what to expect. We viewed the menu and ordered Pulpo a la gallega—Galician octopus—and Gambas al ajillo—prawns with garlic—and some bread.

I had a local beer. Shirley ordered a glass of Albariño.

She took a sip.

"Niiiiice."

Then she laughed.

We both knew what she'd done.

Somewhere along the way, nice—or more accurately, niiiiice—had become Shirley's understated way of saying that something was considerably better than nice.

We'd heard it a lot lately.

The wine was niiiiice.

The food was niiiiice.

The hotel was niiiiice.

Apparently Galicia was niiiiice too.

This time she caught herself doing it.

While we were eating, our financial advisor emailed. He'd seen photographs of the total solar eclipse in the news and knew that we'd traveled to see it. He emailed just to say he was thinking of us and hoped we were having a good time.

I sent him a few photos.

I told him we'd watched the eclipse the night before, walked a little of the Camino that morning, and were now sitting outside eating Galician octopus and prawns.

Perhaps, I told him, we were having too much of a good time.

Then the bill arrived.

€57.

Shirley's Albariño was €2.80 a glass.

She looked at me.

"We can't live here," she said.

We laughed.

It was Thursday.

And somehow that seemed worth noticing.

It's been a little more than a year since we sold Discovery Montessori. We noted the anniversary when it passed, but it wasn't until yesterday that the realization of what we'd done with that year really hit home.

What a year.

We started with visits to our daughters in Maryland and New Mexico, reconnecting with them before traveling.

Then Maui, where we bobbed in the water at Keawakapu Beach, a place we'd returned to enough times that it felt a little like home.

We grilled marlin on a community barbecue and ate it while watching the Maui sunset.

Then we sailed from Seattle to Miami and passed through the Panama Canal.

We watched the skyline of Panama City rise in the distance and sailed toward another constantly changing skyline in Miami.

We ate beet and chicken tostadas in Guatemala and ceviche from a paper cup at a fish market in Panama.

Then back to Maui, this time to explore Hana and Upcountry Maui.

We drove the Road to Hana, walked the Waiʻānapanapa Trail and swam off the black sand beach.

We hiked the Piʻilani Trail and swam at Hamoa Beach.

In Makawao, we woke up to chickens at our door, then watched hunters carry a wild boar out of the Makawao Forest Reserve.

We stood atop Haleakalā and looked down across Maui.

Then Barcelona.

We explored the city on foot and by Metro.

We were drenched by rain.

We walked among Roman ruins nearly two thousand years old.

We walked through a cathedral that had stood for centuries.

And we walked into the Sagrada Família and felt goosebumps.

Then we set sail down the west coast of Africa, heading for Cape Town.

We walked through the volcanic landscape of Lanzarote's Fire Mountains.

In Cape Verde, we stood high above São Vicente on Monte Verde, looking across the volcanic landscape toward the Atlantic.

In Senegal, we took the ferry to Gorée Island and stood inside the House of Slaves, looking through the Door of No Return.

We drove through places where the poverty was almost impossible for us to comprehend.

We looked through the windows of comfortable tour buses at people living lives almost unimaginably different from our own and wondered what they thought as they looked back at us.

In The Gambia, we traveled into the Makasutu Palm Forest and watched life unfold along the road.

In Ivory Coast, we visited Grand-Bassam.

In Ghana, we skipped the organized excursion and ventured out on our own. We rode in a taxi we weren't sure would survive the journey, found a restaurant and had lunch.

In Lomé, Togo, we walked through the Presidential Palace.

Along the way, we crossed the equator.

In São Tomé, we simply started walking.

We walked along Ana Chaves Bay, stopped at a little chocolate shop, bought some chocolate and sat down to eat it.

We drove across enormous dunes in Namibia, with the desert seeming to fall directly into the Atlantic.

We ate lunch among the dunes.

We drank water from an underground river beneath the Namib Desert.

We arrived in Cape Town and rode the gondola to the top of Table Mountain before disembarking the ship.

Cape Town began our journey through southern Africa.

On our first day, we took an Uber to the waterfront and had a meal at Tasha's, where Shirley had the best mojito ever.

We visited Cape Point National Park and stood at the Cape of Good Hope, a place I'd known from maps since I was a kid. I felt goosebumps when I finally stood there.

We stopped at Buffels Bay Beach and looked at the ocean.

Then we decided to get in.

Shirley changed into her swimsuit beside the road.

It wasn't the first time.

She'd done the same thing at Keawakapu.

We stopped at Boulders Beach to see the penguins.

We got coffee at Truth Coffee.

We visited Langa Township and saw a completely different side of the country.

Then Botswana and Zimbabwe.

We flew in small propeller planes over the Okavango Delta and landed on dirt airstrips.

At Little Sable, we slept in a tent in the rain with lions roaring outside.

One night, a hippo hit the tent.

We followed lion tracks without ever finding the lions.

We followed a pair of cheetahs as they followed a herd of antelope.

We were drenched there too.

At Chobe Game Lodge, we watched elephants, giraffes, zebras, hippos, crocodiles and wild dogs.

We even saw a leopard.

At Old Drift Lodge, we visited Victoria Falls and witnessed the smoke that thunders.

We got drenched there too.

And we stopped to watch a dung beetle rolling its ball of dung along the ground. There were even signs along the road warning drivers not to run over the dung beetles.

Then back to South Africa.

We traveled through the Winelands.

From Birkenhead House in Hermanus, we walked the Cliff Path, walked into town, went to the beach and swam in the Atlantic over and over again.

Then home.

Where we decided to put the house on the market.

Then Cancun, for a visit with family.

We snorkeled in the Caribbean and biked through the jungle before descending into Rio Secreto to walk and swim through underground caves and rivers.

Next we drove to New Mexico to be there when our granddaughter Kendra was born.

We held her when her life could still be measured in days.

While we were there, our house sold.

We drove back toward California knowing that another part of our lives was ending.

We had sold our house.

We had sold the furniture.

Shirley sold her car.

We packed what we wanted to keep.

We spent one final night in the home we'd lived in for years.

And then we walked out.

For most of that first year after selling the business, no matter where we traveled, Irvine was still there.

Eventually, we went home.

Then we didn't.

We flew to Morocco.

We got disoriented in the Marrakech medina.

We bought rugs.

We learned to cook Moroccan food.

We hiked through a Berber village in the Atlas Mountains.

We stayed at a nine-villa retreat where we sometimes had the place almost entirely to ourselves.

We took a little boat across the lagoon at Oualidia, walked over the dunes and found an almost empty Atlantic beach on the other side.

It reminded us of Keawakapu.

The pull of the ocean was too strong.

So we got in.

We walked into the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca and felt the same kind of awe we'd felt inside the Sagrada Família.

Then we flew to Portugal.

Porto.

The Douro Valley.

Sintra.

Cascais.

Melides.

Évora.

Lagos.

Lisbon.

We walked beside rivers and cruised between vineyards.

We wandered through palaces and gardens.

We stood at Cabo da Roca, on the edge of another continent, looking out over the same Atlantic we'd stood beside at the Cape of Good Hope.

We kayaked beneath the cliffs and through the caves of the Algarve.

We fell in love with Lagos enough that we already knew we'd return.

We sat outside at São Lourenço do Barrocal with a beer and a glass of wine as the sun went down and the birds settled into the trees.

There was a warm breeze.

Nothing was happening.

Shirley looked around.

"I've never been this comfortable."

I don't think I'll forget that.

Then London.

We walked past Westminster Abbey and visited the Churchill War Rooms.

We looked up at Big Ben and down over London from the Eye.

We cruised the Thames.

We went to Heckfield Place and discovered that coffee, a late breakfast, a walk, exercise, tea and cake, dinner and bed could make a pretty spectacular day.

Shirley stopped doing her hair every day.

Stopped wearing makeup every day.

Walked around in hiking shoes.

Then we boarded the Borealis.

We watched a total solar eclipse from the deck of the ship.

I'd prepared to photograph it.

When totality came, I'm glad I mostly just watched.

It went impossibly fast.

And the next morning we went to Pontevedra and walked a little of a path people have been walking for more than a thousand years.

Then we had lunch.

Which brings me back to Thursday.

When I look across the year rather than simply back through it, what strikes me are the contrasts.

We've walked among Roman ruins nearly two thousand years old and through a cathedral that has survived for centuries because generation after generation continued to care for it.

We've stood inside the Sagrada Família, begun more than a century ago and still being built, and the Hassan II Mosque, completed during our own lifetime.

We've walked a few steps along a path pilgrims have followed for more than a thousand years and flown over the Okavango Delta, where water and wildlife have followed rhythms far older than any of us.

We've sailed past the constantly changing skylines of Panama City and Miami.

We've held a granddaughter whose life could still be measured in days.

And we've watched a total solar eclipse that seemed to be over almost as soon as it began.

We've stayed in five-star hotels with Michelin-starred restaurants.

We've slept in a tent in the pouring rain with lions roaring outside and a hippo hitting the tent in the middle of the night.

We've traveled with private guides.

We've ridden hop-on hop-off buses.

We've dressed for formal evenings aboard the Voyager and the Borealis.

Shirley has changed into a swimsuit beside the road at Keawakapu and the Cape of Good Hope.

We've dined at more Michelin-starred restaurants this year than in all the years before it.

We've eaten ceviche from a paper cup with a little plastic spoon.

We've grilled marlin on a community barbecue.

Some meals have cost hundreds of dollars.

Some have cost almost nothing.

We've loved both.

We've had our breath taken away.

We've followed lion tracks through the African bush.

We've landed on dirt airstrips.

We've climbed enormous dunes.

We've swum through underground rivers.

We've kayaked beneath cliffs.

We've stood beneath Victoria Falls.

We've watched the sun disappear behind the moon.

In some places, we've had our breath taken away.

In others, we've exhaled deeply.

And we've laughed.

A lot.

Shirley ordered the Springbok, which we both thought was fish.

It was antelope.

At Old Drift Lodge, the white monkeys kept going after Shirley. We decided it was because her hair was the same color as theirs and they thought she was a relative.

We've learned that in South Africa now, just now and now-now are different things.

We've experienced the Namibian Cleanse.

And the Moroccan Shuffle.

We asked whether a walking trail would be shaded.

"More or less."

It wasn't.

We saw an albino deer at Heckfield Place and considered the possibility that it was a Yeti.

We've gotten lost.

We've misunderstood people.

We've ordered things we didn't expect.

We've had shoes fall apart.

We've packed too much.

We've hauled bags over cobblestones.

And we've looked at each other and laughed.

Not all of the contrasts have been easy.

We've stood at the Door of No Return in Senegal.

We've seen poverty that was difficult to comprehend.

We've looked out of bus windows and wondered about the lives being lived on the other side of the glass.

And we've lived with extraordinary comfort ourselves.

We've visited places where people have very little and stayed in places where seemingly anything we could want was available simply by asking.

We've experienced beauty and discomfort and privilege and sadness, sometimes within hours of each other.

I don't have a neat lesson from that.

I don't think I want one.

They're simply among the things we've seen.

And then there are the oceans.

The Pacific at Keawakapu.

The Caribbean in Cancun.

The Atlantic at the Cape of Good Hope and Hermanus.

Across the lagoon and over the dunes in Oualidia.

Below the cliffs in Lagos.

From the edge of the continent at Cabo da Roca.

Sometimes we've traveled thousands of miles only to find ourselves doing the same thing.

Standing at the edge of the water.

Looking at each other.

And getting in.

Maybe that's why Thursday struck me.

After everything we've done, it wasn't a particularly remarkable day.

We walked.

We ate.

We talked.

We laughed.

Shirley drank a glass of wine.

There was nowhere else we needed to be.

Nothing else the day needed to become.

And yet, sitting there in Vigo, I could feel that whole improbable year behind us.

I've seen things.

But that's not quite right.

We've seen things.

We've seen things I once knew only from maps.

We've seen things I didn't know existed.

We've seen things that gave me goosebumps.

Things that made us uncomfortable.

Things that made us laugh.

Things that made us feel very small.

Things that made us feel incredibly fortunate.

And some of my favorite memories are of almost nothing happening at all.

A sunset.

A swim.

Coffee.

Lunch.

A walk.

Shirley asleep beside a pool.

"I've never been this comfortable."

"Niiiiice."

And we're still going.

Greenland.

Iceland.

Peru.

Hawaii.

Australia.

New Zealand.

I have no idea which of those places will give us the memories we'll still be talking about years from now.

I'm increasingly certain they won't necessarily be the ones we're going there to see.

Maybe it will be something extraordinary.

Maybe it will be another Thursday.

For now, Shirley took another sip of her €2.80 Albariño.

"Niiiiice."

And laughed.