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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This story ends at the Seattle talk show New Day Northwest, where I appeared right after musician Lukas Nelson, son of Willie Nelson, and a unique talent in his own right. I’d never heard him before and I was impressed:

Lukas Nelson is the son of Willie Nelson, and a unique talent in his own right.

How did I get here?

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I’m not doing this right. Every time I travel, that thought occurs to me at some point. I woke up yesterday morning at 7:30, and was ready to go by 9:00, which made me feel so grownup and responsible. Then I remembered I hadn’t yet checked the driving directions from Cheyenne, at the southern end of Wyoming, to Lovell, at the northern end. I regretted my lack of a GPS or smart phone — though I don’t know how I would have swung that, when I had neither enough cash nor credit for this trip until a couple of days before it started. Ah, panic: sometimes I rationalize that this is what adventure is made of.

It was a gorgeous second day of spring, but wow, I’d forgotten how windy Wyoming is!

I copied the directions off Google Maps, then decided to call the Fort Causeway Hostel for specifics, because I might arrive there at dusk. I thought I had the phone number, but I didn’t. So I checked the website, but the number wasn’t listed. Odd. I thought I made my reservation by phone – how did I do that? I gave up, and hoped to arrive before dusk. So, I left at 9:30. No problem. Google said the drive would take about six hours, 45 minutes. I had budgeted eight, including a lunch break, gas breaks, and a few stops for photos. Plenty of time.

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My decision to leave and travel around the world with a 13-year-old was not impulsive but directed. At the time, I hardly realized the impact on everyone who was involved with this journey. The gift of telling the story from my current perspective is interesting in that so much more of it is understood.

I truly expected this painting to fall apart by now, but it’s fine.

The date was September 10, 1997, and I will never forget the morning my husband dropped our youngest daughter and myself off at the bus stop on our way to JFK airport and the world. I had never traveled by myself or been out of the country more than stepping over the Canadian border one time. But when you know you have to do something, courage finds a place in your heart. We left with too much stuff and started a process of getting rid of things in Chile that lasted all the way to Thailand. I was traveling with a portable wooden easel and 20 pounds of oil paints. I didn’t realize when I left how hard it would be to find mineral spirits when I didn’t understand the language. It was a constant challenge in each country that we went to, but we were eventually able to find it every time.

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I’ve taken two trips to China to do research for a historical novel. Tortillas from the Canton Café will be loosely based on the family history of my Chinese-Mexican grandmother. Here are more of my journal notes on Hong Kong, as I continue “Tracing China’s Past”:

April 13, 2008
Hong Kong, China

We visited a place that retained some of the traditional beauty of old Hong Kong: Hoi Pa Village and Tak Wah Park.

Yesterday my translator ZhuZhu and I took the Metro to Tsuen Wan, one of Kowloon’s outlying housing estate districts. Don’t let the term “housing estate” fool you; in Tsuen Wan, as elsewhere in Kowloon, most people live in tiny apartments in dismal, repetitive high-rises. However, we visited a place that retained a vestige of the traditional beauty of old Hong Kong: Hoi Pa Village and Tak Wah Park.

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As I continued my quest to Trace China’s Past…

Hong Kong
April 12, 2008

Yesterday my translator Zhu Zhu and I returned to Hong Kong Island for another historic walking tour, because my feet just weren’t sore enough yet. This time we walked to the old Central Police Station on Hollywood Road, built in 1919. The building shares a block with the former Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison. Because Hong Kong began its British colonial history as a bustling port of international trade, it attracted many pirates. Hollywood Road was once famous for public executions — beheadings mostly.

Hollywood Road was once famous for public executions — beheadings mostly.

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Back to my promise to tell you about my search for family history in China — which I haven’t forgotten, though my recent book release has kept me quite busy. Here’s one of the more unusual rabbit holes I jumped into as I tried to chase a piece of my great aunt’s past… as a prisoner of war. Out of respect for her privacy, let’s call her Aunt Darla.

Hong Kong, China
April 11, 2008

I don’t know how difficult it would be to break out of a Hong Kong prison, but breaking into one is pretty much impossible. Yesterday, my translator Zhu Zhu and I took a bus from Hong Kong Central to the small beach town of Stanley on the far reaches of the island. We got off near the entrance to Stanley Prison. The prison was built in 1937, and by 1942 it was taken over by the Japanese after they invaded Hong Kong. Sometime between 1942 and 1945, my Aunt Darla, her fiancé, his family, and my other aunt’s husband Nippy were held prisoner at Stanley Internment Camp.

Sometime between 1942 and 1945, my aunt, her fiancé, his family, and my other aunt’s husband Nippy were held prisoner at Stanley Internment Camp.

According to second-hand stories: Darla and Nip had gone to the harbor to see off Darla’s fiancé and his family, who were moving to Macau. Her fiancé’s dad owned hunting rifles, which he tried to hide in a mattress to take with them. The Japanese found the rifles and accused everyone in the group of collaborating with the Portuguese, since Macau was a Portuguese colony. They were all arrested and thrown in Stanley Prison.

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DRESS REHEARSALS

Adventures are like dress rehearsals for the real thing. I have spent my life careening from one adventure to the next - always looking for the next big trip to tick off my list. Whether climbing Kilimanjaro, trekking through Bhutan or scuba diving with sharks, I told myself that by taking great risk, I was learning to handle crisis. Of course, I never imagined the kind of crisis I might have to face.

Climbing Kilimanjaro, I told myself that by taking great risk, I was learning to handle crisis.

I told myself that perhaps if I kept moving, kept adventuring, those bad things would never find me. If I filled my life with chosen risks, then there’d be no room for the unwanted ones, as if each life had a danger quota. For years I convinced myself that by taking calculated risks I was actually forestalling calamity.

But that’s not how it worked.

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Most of my friends are adventurous, with active lives, open minds, and generous hearts: they’re travelers, hikers, writers, photographers, dancers, activists, and more. Kim Kircher balances skiing, traveling, and writing - and gets paid for it. She’s on the ski patrol at Crystal Mountain in Washington, so at this time of year she skis, rides in helicopters, and sets off explosives for avalanche control. She’s an Emergency Medical Technician who has saved at least two people’s lives! Her memoir, The Next Fifteen Minutes has just been picked up by Behler Publications. It’s the story of how she applied the lessons learned in a life of adventure to help her husband through a bout with cancer. She’s fascinated with what adventure can teach all of us, and has asked me to offer my take on the subject. I hope you’ll head to her blog to read my guest post: What Adventure Has Taught Me. Then I hope you’ll check out the rest of Kim’s site. She’s amazing!

I’ve been eager for writer Cat Kurtz to return to Girls Trek Too, to tell us more about her adventure among Buddhist nuns fighting for equal rights in Thailand. Cat Kurtz is the author of My Heart the Sun, a non-fiction account of Theravada nuns and their battle to become bhikkunis, fully ordained monastics. You can read her previous guest post here: My Heart the Sun: A Book Excerpt. After visitors and I read it, we wanted to know what happened next. Cat was kind enough not to say, “You’ll have to wait for the book to find out,” but instead to generously provide one more excerpt! First, she has written a brief set-up, to let us know where we are in the story:

Lee was a nun who threatened the Thai power gender hierarchy, where only men were permitted to wear full ordination orange.

Cat Kurtz: Ajahn Yai Guong Saeng was a fully ordained Buddhist nun living in Bangkok, but unlike my new friend Lee, she did not practice Theravada Buddhism, the national religion of Thailand. Ajahn Yai was Chinese and ordained in Mahayana Buddhism. While Lee was a nun who threatened the Thai power gender hierarchy, where only men were permitted to wear full ordination orange, Ajahn Yai slipped beneath the country’s radar wearing Mahayana grey. This allowed her to build the only temple in Bangkok dedicated to a female deity and run entirely by women. Lee decided that visiting this temple was the best way I could spend my first day in Thailand…

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