Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“How old are
you
?” I asked John.
“Well, I'm 88.”
Nora winked, “He's a spring chicken!”
Nora was born in 1911, one year before the Titanic sank. Three years before the outbreak
of World War I. When Nora was born, William Taft was the president of America. Now it
was President Barack Obama. In 1911, African Americans weren't even allowed to vote.
Nora, John, and I began to talk about the moments from the last century. I was in awe
of these two people who had seen so much history, and were still here to talk about it. We
made our way all the way up to the 1960s, when we began discussing the moon landing.
I was born long after that fateful day, but I still remember seeing the photos of those first
steps and wondering how such a thing had occurred. The idea that man could actually be
blasted into space was of course nearly miraculous, but then to imagine what Neil Arm-
strong must have felt in that moment—caught between the silence of the moon and the
great big planet down below watching him. I asked John and Nora what that moment was
like for them.
John said, “It was something that . . . they talked about it for so long that when it finally
happened, I still didn't believe it. But when I saw the picture of them landing on the moon,
I'll tell you, it was quite an event.”
Sometimes dreams are like that. We talk about them for a long time before they can hap-
pen. Sometimes we are the only people left who still believe that they will. And when your
dream is to go to the moon. Well, that takes a lot of talking.
I remembered
The Odyssey
. At the end of the journey, only Odysseus believes he will
make it home. So many distractions, so many challenges, and yet he knows that one day,
he will return to Ithaca.
I imagined the odyssey that first took those three men to the moon was no different.
People had been looking up at that luminous rock for thousands and thousands of years,
and in 1969, the two people sitting in front of me (along with many other millions) had
watched it all happen on television.
And then we talked about my own odyssey. All the places I had visited and people I had
met. I realized as I was describing my trip to Bhutan that it didn't even feel real. It felt like
a dream I had had. Not something I had actually lived.
“And now I'm heading home,” I told them. The words just as strange as the trip I had
explained.
“Well, that's the real adventure, isn't it?” Nora asked.
