Journal Entry 11.3.23

All adventurers must have a mundane side. Why do I feel like an adventurer when I am traveling the world or sailing a boat, or skiing a mountain, even if I am sailing badly, or struggling to breathe or out of shape? When I am doing, no matter how feebly, I still can acknowledge that I am part of a clan of people joined by the fire in their blood to go farther and find things unknown to them, to see and do things that are difficult and unfamiliar, to become familiar with the difficult and unknown, and to make a home there. But then I go home and I feel mundane and boring. I doubt if I belong to that clan. I feel forgotten and left behind.

Even Ranulph Fiennes sits at home and plays cards with his friends. Isak Dinesen sat in the shade in the cool of her porch and read books. Everyone cooks, everyone baths, everyone fills their days with mundane tasks, but I don’t think they all allow doubt to creep in as fully as I do. I know some do, it is what drives them back out. What does it matter if I am an adventuress in my or anyone else’s eyes? I know that urge, the call that drives me to say, “why not?” Why, when I am sitting by the fire, drinking my tea, knitting all by myself, do I wonder if it is all over, if I have retired to the world of the ordinary, if my life of adventure is done? I remember thinking that in 1980 when I first returned from Borneo. My life has been anything but boring or ordinary since.

I think, in part, I loose touch with the part of me who has adventures because it is such a rarified existence. When I tell people what I do that often say, “Wow!” with big eyes and the conversation ends or they make some derogatory comment as if they are threatened. I can’t talk about my life without sounding grand (what is wrong with being grand if my life is grand?) It is my life that is grand not me. I am simply someone who takes advantage of opportunities, who doesn’t hold back, who doesn’t let the practical intrude on the fantastic.

I look forward to bundling up with my fisherman’s sweater, wearing my kira in the snow, building a fire and continuing my work on this book this winter when I return. I will begin making plans for the next trip, and not let the bill paying, the financial meetings, the house and dock repairs, and the ordinary things of life detract from my soul, from the pull of my blood, from the maps that call me. I will rest, and gain strength, and I will return.