“Make your choice, adventurous Stranger,
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.”
―C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
“One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them.”―C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
Any adventure involves a common denominator: risk. The unknown is always a risk, and we all approach adventure differently. Some tumble head-first at the slightest hint of risk or new adventures. Some analyze and question, and have to have all their ducks in a row before embarking on a new unknown.
Regardless of our approach to adventure, many of us recognize its call. There's a spark in each one of us for some sort of newness that the unknown offers. Sometimes, we get tired of the mundane and want a fresh spark to set our lives on fire again. Other times, we are running from things in our lives that cause us pain, that are weighing us down, or that threaten to harm us. Sometimes, life is going great, but a new journey presents itself and beckons us to join.
We recently set out on a new adventure that simply presented itself. We picked up our family and moved from Charleston, SC, to central California—Yosemite National Park area! We loaded up our two cars with the essentials, while the moving truck was loaded with all the rest, and we drove through South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The whole trip took about five days to complete. We witnessed amazing scenery and the most incredible storm system in New Mexico that we've ever seen. We survived a massic hail storm, in that same system. It felt like we encountered every type of human stereotype. Our kids got to experience a lot of wonderful things, and we listened to lots of audiobooks along the way.
So now we're here, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, setting up our new home, making new friends, and settling into our new life and a new adventure in the west. Traveling was only the first part—the real adventure begins now, in our normal day-to-day life of getting acclimated. I love the quote above from The Horse and His Boy (one of my all-time fav reads) because it captures the essence—the meat—of true adventure.
Oftentimes, we think of adventure as BIG—and sometimes it definitely is. However, so many times we miss adventure because it is cloaked in our daily lives, and may actually seem quite small at first glance. We charge onward in our day, and tackle the many projects and responsibilities that face us, and (at times) are sadly too consumed by worry, anxieties, and hurry to see the "most beautiful places" that are part of our life's adventure.
I think that's my prayer and my hope—that I wouldn't miss those places in my normal life. I'd like to savor them a bit before I let them go and carry on with my day. I would like to reach the end of my day and not feel like I missed out. So many times, I do! I miss those gems in my day. I miss those times of beautiful adventure that call to me, because (as Lewis says) I am "too anxious and hurried to appreciate them.” So there is my goal in this new adventure—to see each piece of it, and to appreciate them.
