For an adventurous soul, the window seat at 37,000 feet is a gateway to exploration.
The wonder laid bare on today’s predawn journey home to the East Coast? The Sierra Nevada playground of John Muir, then the vastness of the Great Salt Lake immediately followed by the snow-capped Rockies that seem as if they might scrape the underbelly of the jet.
I was a kid who roamed the forests, farms, and mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Those rugged western views below will always call to me, pulling at me to wander through for an adventure. Now, I’m trapped in the mid-Atlantic with only glimpses of wilderness, and my pull to adventure is only temporarily soothed by the comparatively civilized Blue Ridge mountains.
Far removed are my days of overflowing confidence and access to wilderness, back when I wagered with a girlfriend while at a bar that, only a few short hours later, I’d have my first keeper trout before she could get out of bed. I lost that bet, but only because I was too far out of cell service, deep in fir covered canyons, to text photographic evidence.
The landscape below the plane awakened as the rest of the passengers attempted to catch up on sleep. For me, witnessing these wonders does more to rejuvenate me than the hour and a half of an announcement-interrupted sleep pursued by those around me. It stokes the flickering fire to explore, the fire tamped down by the day-to-day nine-to-five life. Meetings that could have been a phone call. Phone calls that could have been an email.
It’s easy to work so hard to afford time to get away from everything that we miss out on the world that surrounds us.
The sun pulls back a starry night blanket to reveal the palest shade of blue. The sun’s angle is still low enough that the light streaking through the gaps in the mountain ranges cuts dark shadows of their western edges in sharp relief. Those slopes and their gurgling cold creeks are where native cutthroat trout swim in the eddies; where mule deer and elk bound through the lower sagebrush canyons. Knowing what adventures await below, clashes with the reality of seeing the landscape at a distance, spurring my yearning to climb towards the timberline again.
So, rather than catching up on sleep from the 3:30 am Uber ride to the airport, I mentally bookmark town names. A silver lining of technology: the interactive inflight map on the headrest in front of me. Finding towns that could be gateways into the ranges holding picturesque drainage basins and fragrant alpine meadows. Camping streamside at the end of a long day comes to mind as I speed over it all at 500 miles per hour. There is plenty of reading and research to do after the kids go to bed.
Others may have their pull to adventure, despite going to the same beaches and same campsites during the mass exodus from the beltways on ‘summer Fridays’. They never look around long enough to see where they are. They don’t think to find a path less traveled. They may have that itch or spark but are unsure how to follow it.
To surrender yourself to the mundane is to extinguish the inherent drive to explore. Try following the ‘what if’ of what lays around the river bend or force yourself to try a campground away from the pavement. The experience and pleasure of a simple adventure might surprise you.
The sweet spot of your children’s ages, when they are old enough to go on hikes, but not too old to want to spend time with their Mom and Dad, is a narrowing window. The months and years are ticking by as fast as the ground below the plane. It is the opportunity to kindle their spark that will eventually, hopefully, be their call to adventure.
With a little luck, the next flight will be with backpacks and fly rods in tow rather than laptops and suits. Hopefully, it is a journey with the youngsters or close friends on two-track dirt roads that end in trailheads.
Where the only sign of civilization is a distant airplane filled with dreamers.
About the Author
A waterfowler pursuing ducks, geese, and the various upland birds that call the Willamette Valley of Oregon home since childhood, Shawn Swearingen now lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and two young sons. Call making, hunting, and the outdoors are his passions. When he is not making calls, he’s chasing waterfowl across the country, training his red lab, Sully, or casting for brook trout in the Blue Ridge & rockfish and speckled trout in the Chesapeake Bay.
