Adventuresome Company

This harebrained, visit-every-continent notion is in part the result of my being able recently to spend time with an unusually high number of extremely adventuresome individuals.

Last week, attending the local singles' ward where my parents live, I couldn't help overhearing a couple of ladies talking. One of them had apparently just moved back to Utah after a rather bohemian, four-year jaunt around the Eastern Seaboard.

Sensing a kindred spirit, I interrupted their conversation and we ended up having the nicest chat. Turns out she had spent six months in Spit-in-the-Middle-of-Nowhere, WY, living off the land. She also spent six months in the Dominican Republic, palling around with impoverished house-servants, not to mention a variety of other wild excursions. We ended up running around a bizarre Mormon sculpture garden in the dark the next day.

Dinner and a movie? How about instead we have our fortunes read in a seedy building downtown?

I met another adventurer in New York who had spent two months doing humanitarian work in the Dominican Republic immediately after attending High School in Utah and immediately before leaving home to attend college in the city.

My usual go-to date line is "Want to grab dinner this week?" In response to this question, this person responded that dinner was a little too pedestrian for her taste. Though not in so many words. Rather, she suggested, why don't we tromp up the canyon and look at ice castles and then toboggan down an Olympic ski slope?

That didn't happen, but we did have a lovely time ice skating and skiing.

And all of this without mentioning my boss, who is currently building an "Adventure Lodge" in the Peruvian rain forest, where like-minded individuals can spend a lively vacation photographing jaguars (or whatever it is one does in Peru). And let's not forget about an old copine from High School who is leaving this week for the Dominican Republic (is there something Dominican in the water?) to learn Spanish and who-knows-what-all.

My life feels charmed. I'm lucky to be surrounded by so many people who are living so fully. I feel inspired to go and do. I feel an enthusiasm to, when I encounter people like these, be able to compare notes.