FEBRUARY 13, 2023 – Amidst the day’s stresses, missteps, mishaps, curveballs, roadblocks, news headlines and yes, ice-canyons in the alleyway, the sun smiled—when I looked up long enough to notice. Plus, there were the gems—my monthly, uplifting appointment with my hero, Dr. Kolla; a walk with a friend and scintillating conversation about the study of history; a recently posted recording of members of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra performing Mendelssohn’s String Octet in E-flat; and 11 rotations up and down the big ski hill of “Little Switzerland” in perfect spring skiing conditions.
The crown jewel of the day, however, was a Zoom session with my friend James O., who shared a professional-caliber, photographic, travelogue book he’d recently assembled featuring his father’s many trips around the globe. At the suggestion of James’s daughter, James had just completed the project for presentation to the family patriarch on his upcoming 90th birthday. The book was inspired by Richard Halliburton’s famous two-volume travel book, Book of Marvels, originally published in 1937.
A lawyer by trade, James’s father always had his eye on a world atlas. There isn’t a continent he hasn’t touched (including while asleep on the ice of Antarctica). Even by James’s own standards as a world traveler, his father is a veritable Odysseus, whose sights are always trained on some distant destination. Aboard a giant sphere, this compulsion is an exercise in infinity. Getting him to surrender his passport would an exercise in futility.
As James led me on a first class tour of the book, I thought as much about what’s not captured by the tome as by the travels it documents. Especially from the perspective of my personal bubble, even a sliver of the world traveled by this near-nonagenarian seems well beyond reach. Some of the photos framed sites I’d visited in a much younger life and carried me back in time: the Pyramid of Cheops in Giza; the Taj Mahal in the steaming heat of Agra; the train from Kleine Scheidegg in the shadow of The Eiger and up to the bracing air of the Aletsch Glacier under the gaze of Die Jungfrau.
After returning from the book tour, my mind continued to travel, metaphorically across time and a range of possibilities. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel the thorn of regret for what might have been but wasn’t. If anything, I experienced pure delight in viewing the extraordinary depiction of travels by someone who’s lived a long and powerfully good life. I was as impressed by the creative capture of a man’s travels as I was by his actual journeys.
The “numbers” that Dr. Kolla reviewed with me today were great—“bad” ones almost non-existent; “good” ones showing a robust recovery of my immune system. Next week I have my six-month check-up with the transplant team at the U of MN (following my six-month bone marrow biopsy later this week). These are preliminary stops on my way to the planning phase of possible future travels. But truthfully, I’m more eager to visit with friends than I am to climb on Ayers Rock or pass by the Rock of Gibraltar.
When all the possible earthbound destinations and modes of travel are considered, I’m thrilled to be on the greatest trip known to humankind: hurtling through space aboard . . . spaceship earth.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
