I believe one way to turn travel into a more fulfilling adventure is to embark on a mission. I met Coloradan Lynette Collins at a book event, where she read an inspiring email she’d written about her recent mission to Honduras. She and her dentist husband had joined the East Chapel Hill Rotary Club of North Carolina for a medical/dental mission. Lynette kindly agreed to let me share her email here. The written content is unaltered, with the exception of a few words of clarification:

One way to turn travel into a more fulfilling adventure is to embark on a mission. A medical/dental mission to Honduras is just one of many possibilities.

LYNETTE’S EMAIL

Hi everyone!

I wanted to let you know that we returned early this morning and we are well… no malaria yet like George Clooney contracted in Sudan! Bozo. He should have taken pills and received his shots like we did!

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Perhaps you’ve heard there are only two stories: 1) someone goes on a journey, or 2) a stranger comes to town. So, there’s really only one story, because “a stranger comes to town” is the flip side of “someone goes on a journey.” As a traveler and writer, I appreciate both. When I can’t go on a journey, I love the journey to come to me.

Denver’s Lighthouse LitFest is a two-week exploration of the craft, business, and camaraderie of the writer’s life.

That’s what it is to have Denver’s Lighthouse LitFest “come to town” each year, a two-week exploration of the craft, business, and camaraderie of the writer’s life. That’s what it was to have my friend Elizabeth drive from San Diego to Denver to join me for this June’s LitFest. She’d given me a party and a place to stay during my recent book tour, and I was eager to return the favor, and to share this amazing event with another writer.

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I’m growing a box of dirt. This was not my intention. I was hoping for vegetables. A tomato plant is growing at the back of the box, but I can’t take credit for that. My friend Kelli gave it to me, informing me, “It’s called The Mortgage Lifter because it’s so easy to grow that the guy who created it sold enough plants to pay off his mortgage.”

I was hoping for vegetables.

For my birthday, I asked my husband to help me build a square foot garden. Dale’s a handy guy, and I think he enjoyed the idea almost as much as I did. He looked so cheerful walking amid the lumber, tools, and bags of soil at Home Depot.

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Remember the time you were stuck at the side of the road all night, trying to hitchhike your way to Andorra? Then there’s the time you spent four hours in a Madrid train station, trying to buy tickets, only to be thrown out by the ticket seller because you were a weeping wreck. Or how about the time you somehow lost your money and tube pass and had to hike four hours across drizzly London, using an A-Z to find your way back to your squat?

(No, not that kind of squat!) This life-sized artwork graced the wall of a cat piss-drenched room in Amsterdam. It was too big to remove & hide.

These lowlights of our trips can be excruciating in the moment, but later prove to be some of the best things that happened to you. Why are lowlights (as opposed to highlights) so great for the adventurous traveler? Here are five reasons the lowlights can be the real reason we leave home.

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