The World Traveller

Plenty of Vitamin D out here!

Yesterday drove out to Kenner Ranch located 4 miles south of Julian with Rhana for a horseback ride with Kathleen and Diane.  After loading up the horses into their trailer we headed out into the Cleveland National Forest.  It was a great opportunity to get some fresh air and vitamin D.  As you can tell by this photo, we are all duded up with our cowboy hats and Ariat riding boots.  As Woody Allen said 80 percent of success is showing up.  Rhana and I agree, but would like to add that the remaining 20% of success is dressing the part!.  Up for a ride and live in San Diego County?  Visit (http://www.kennerhorseranch.com) and book a ride up in our local mountains.

I was trying to remember the first time I was aware I was traveling. While going through old photos of me as a child, I found a photo of myself frowning at a campfire. My sister Liz was poking a stick into the fire as my oldest sister Genie and my brother Arthur look on. That picture was probably taken at Paradise Hideaway in the Cleveland National Forest. We had a camper trailer when I was growing up and my father used to drive the family up there for two weeks to beat the 110 degree summer heat in the Imperial Valley where I was born. Although I can not remember that moment in time, I do somehow remember the green squeeze bottle and smell of Prell gel shampoo – which we only used when camping. Another memory I recall vaguely is attending 4-H camp for a week for several summers with my sister Liz. Not long ago, Liz and I happened to be up in the Cleveland National forest, near Julian and we decided to try to find the camp. To our disappointment, the camp is now a Religious retreat center. The only original cabin left standing was the one Liz stayed in. In hindsight, sometimes it is better to remember things as they were and not try to re-create a feeling you had in real time. That is probably also true of relationships with ex-boyfriends.

Since that time, I have trodden roads less traveled. I have raced an Arabian against a nomadic Bedouin in the Sinai Desert of Egypt. I have trodden on an Al-tekke horse along the same road as Alexander the Great to his famous city of Nissa in Uzbekistan. Another time, I rode a horse up into the jungle near Mt. Popa in Myanmar (formally Burma). I have tried every form of transportation available that would make traveling in a third world country more bearable. Helicopters, chartered boats to cruise up the Irrawaddy, Mekong and Nile, bullock carts, trains, planes, hot air balloons and even hiking with my own two feet.

I am compulsive when it comes to travel. It is my passion. People travel for many reasons. Some are interested in scholarly pursuits; some have interest in physical challenges. There are those whose objectives simply are to check off countries on a list. There is commerce, religious and also humanitarian endeavors that drive people into travel situations. For whatever reasons we travel, once we take that first jump – we can never be the same. For me personally, the sense of movement and cross-cultural exchange between others has become a rather eccentric obsessive behavior. So much so eventually I turned this behavior into a full-time business.

But life inevitably has a life of its own. Perhaps it is to show us that we are not invincible nor need to be “in charge” of everything around us. Sure, it is easier for us to wear blinders and ignore the lessons that continually rain down upon us. But, like it or not, in time some of those lessons eventually soak through. Whatever the lesson may be, the message is ultimately always the same: Pay attention to the moments as they are all that really matter.