A close friend recently asked me: “Beth, why are you and your daughter taking this three-month adventure to South East Asia at this time?” hinting that I might be trying to escape another long northeastern United States winter. Her question was probably whispered among many friends. So I thought my first post might try to explain not only why I’m making this trip, but why I travel at all. What follows is a partial response to her question.

I am surrounded by family and friends, including a supportive husband (as hard as that sometimes is for him) and three growing children. By any standard, I have the perfect life. Yet, I am always a little unsettled, constantly searching for places to go, sometimes for real and sometimes made up, all of which take me far away from home. (I can’t wait to meet George Clooney so I can tell him about the incredible places we’ve traveled together.)

One might say I am possessed by the desire to travel. Usually, that travel includes my family. Together with my children and husband, we have traveled to many different countries, such as Canada, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Chile, Greece, Italy, the Shetland Islands, Morocco, Kenya, South Africa, Namibia, Japan, Australia, Alaska (a wild frontier like no other and so included as if it were a different country), and Pella, Iowa (my hometown and like another country to my New Jersey born and bred children).

But, I also crave the adventure of solo travel. My husband lets me slip away to Alaska now and again to enjoy a fly fishing trip down some wild river. But, the reality is that with children ranging in age from 10 to 19, it is hard to slip away. So, I am doing the next best thing, leaving my two oldest at home with my husband, and taking my youngest with me. Once kids hit 11 or 12, it becomes nearly impossible to issue unsupported dictates. “Because mom says so,” doesn’t cut it any more. And frankly, I had no legitimate reason for wrestling them away from friends and everything that was safe and comfortable except, “it will somehow forever change you.” But, by making the trip now, I could still take my 10-year old before the teenage years set in. And the idea of sharing this adventure with Ellie seemed right.

I researched this trip for a year. At times, it consumed me, to the point that I felt as if I’d already been to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. The truth is that I almost enjoy the preparation as much as I do the travel itself. It is certainly a safer way to travel – vicariously, through other’s blogs or books or pictures. You don’t have to deal with the inevitable traveler’s diarrhea, the occasional food poisoning from a rancid piece of meat or fish, the scare of malaria, pre-travel inoculations, and the weariness that can overcome you when you travel with a loose itinerary.

But, ultimately, if you don’t go, you miss out on what I can only describe as a traveler’s high. It is that moment when you are awestruck by what your eyes are telling you, or you are mesmerized by a stranger’s life that has been unexpectedly shared with you, or you realize that your understanding was so limited without experiencing it for real.

In Rosemary Mahoney’s book, “Down the Nile,” she describes wanting to see the Nile River, not just from a cruise boat, “but to sit in the middle of it in [her] own boat, alone.” If you’re a traveler, you understand.

When Ellie was 3, we took the kids to Alaska for the second time. I designed a trip in which we were taxied to an uninhabited island with kayaks and camping supplies just beyond the mouth of Glacier Bay. We spent our days kayaking in the Icy Straits among breaching whales and curious sea lions. With the help of a guide, we managed to stay clear of surfacing whales. It was a dreamy experience, with a hint of danger, singing to the wind using kelp as microphones, and banking to look for wild berries along the way. But, what still makes me shiver with awe is what we experienced at night – totally unexpected.

The first night, in my two-person tent with Ellie holding tight, I swore we were within inches of a battle between two grizzlies. I was paralyzed with fear. The ground shook. The wind moaned. After surviving the night, the following morning our guide patiently instructed me that what I heard was the constant breaching of whales from afar (and, by the way, grizzlies hadn’t been spotted on the island for years, if ever.). I needed to see this. So, the next night, I perched myself on the beach straining to see these beasts that must be within reach, certainly within the eye’s reach. So much power, so much thunderous noise, and in the light of an Alaskan summer sky, I could not see the whales. Yet, even at a distance, I felt their strength rising up through the ground on which I sat, humbled. There is not a blog or a picture or a book that could have taken me to that beach on that night.

There are many reasons why I travel; being humbled or awestruck by something totally unexpected is certainly one of them. We say good-bye tomorrow, leaving from one of my favorite spots in the world, Moonlight Basin, in Big Sky, Montana. The rest of the family heads back east, while Ellie and I fly west.

Beth Van Hoeven
Big Sky, Montana
bvanhoev@waltzingmatildatravel.com