I had a scary medical event happen to me this past holiday season. While I am fine now, it left me reflecting on how grateful I am for my family, friends, and this wonderful life we have the privilege of living.
Then there’s the gratitude I have for travel. The kind of gratitude that settles deep in your bones and aches when you are not experiencing it. Travel has taught me two truths.
1️⃣ This world is breathtakingly big and endlessly beautiful. The more I see, the more I realize how much there is still waiting — mountains I haven’t climbed (figuratively!), streets I haven’t wandered, languages I haven’t heard in real life. The world feels expansive and alive. And I want to experience as much of it as I can before I leave this Earth.
2️⃣ I am who I am because I travel. Because I said yes to unfamiliar places. Because I stood in nature that made me feel small in the best possible way. I have been stretched by cultures very different from my own.
Travel has shaped my perspectives, strengthened my resilience, and widened my heart ♥️ so much so that it aches when I don’t travel for a while. It has been a teacher, a mirror, and a gift. Every journey has left something in me that nobody can take away — humility, curiosity, wonder, and growth.
And perhaps the greatest realization of all is this: I don’t travel to escape my life. I travel to become more fully myself.
And maybe that’s why this blog began in the first place.
I started writing here just before I left for Antarctica in 2022, on the edge of one of the most extraordinary adventures of my life. At the time, I thought I was documenting something new. But what I’ve come to realize is that Antarctica wasn’t the beginning. There are pieces of me scattered across the globe and the frozen South Pole was simply the continuation of a story that had already been unfolding for years.
What’s missing are the chapters that shaped me long before that icy horizon came into view, the journeys that stretched me, surprised me, and quietly transformed me.
So in this next series of posts, I’m going back.
In each one, I’ll share three of my favorite adventures. Not just where I went, but what the journey gave me.
Because if travel is how I’ve become myself, then these are the stories that built me.
Some of the pictures were taken before the invention of the iPhone. I used an actual camera 😜 or took a picture of the picture from a photo album…imagine that! I gave up on those a long time ago. Occasionally, I still put together a Shutterfly book, but now that I have this website, it’s difficult to focus on more than one medium.
My goal in writing these stories is simple: to capture memories in a way that allows me to return to them—to relive the best of the best and never forget the lessons I learned, the people who changed me, and the cultures that expanded my heart and mind.
Maybe one day my family will stumble upon these words and find something meaningful in them. Maybe a great-great grandchild will think it’s incredible that their ancestor survived 25-foot waves in the Drake Passage, slept beside penguins in Antarctica, and stood under a purple sunset in the Atlas Mountains.
Maybe someone will laugh at how long it once took to fly from the United States to Japan — back when we flew across oceans instead of beaming across them.
Or maybe these posts will drift quietly in some corner of digital purgatory, unread and untouched.
But even then, they will have done their job. Because they will have helped me remember. And remembering is its own kind of journey
Here are 3 of my favorite travel stories:
#1 – Morocco’s Sahara Desert
I finally had to take a picture of the original photograph — the one that has been pinned to bulletin boards and reframed in different seasons of my life.
April 1988. I’m standing in the Sahara Desert, wearing a sorority T-shirt and a tagelmust, a little sunburned, carefree, and completely unaware that this trip would mark me forever.
How lucky was I to be in Northern Africa for spring break!
I was studying in Valencia, Spain for my sophomore university year, and a few of us scraped together the last of our discretionary funds and signed up for a Mundo Joven bus tour to Morocco. It felt spontaneous. Slightly reckless. Absolutely irresistible.
That trip had everything — adventure, history, nature, romance, intrigue, and just enough danger to make it unforgettable. I bought a pair of harem-style pants. I laughed with our fellow travelers. I tasted couscous for the first time. I negotiated in crowded souks (and somehow became the main player in a camel 🐪 incident). I traded my blue jeans for a hammered copper plate, and handed out candies and pencils to children.
The smell I’ll never forget of the Chouara tannery in the Fez Medina.
The brilliance of color in the spice stalls.
Having to leave our hotel room in Rabat early because the king was coming to town.
Mint tea sipped while I learned about Moroccan wool rugs.
A kiss was just a kiss in Casablanca.
The roar of the Marrakech market, the traditional tooth seller/doctor in the Djemaa el-Fnaa square. Buying the freshest orange 🍊 juice of my life from one of the vendors.
The humbling silence of the desert.
I could write a novel about that journey. And maybe someday I will.
It was there, in the vastness of that landscape, that I witnessed the purple sunset over the Atlas Mountains. Sometimes I question whether it was real or some desert mirage painted across the horizon just for us.
But I know it happened.
And that violet sky lives in me still.
#2. The Northern Lights somewhere over Canada
The first time I saw the Northern Lights was August 18, 2018.
Picture this: I’m sitting by the window on a late-night Delta flight from Minneapolis to Anchorage. The cabin lights are dimmed. Most passengers are asleep. The only sound is the steady hum of the engines at 35,000 feet.
Being a night owl, I’m wide awake, thinking about how I am going to miss my youngest son once we drop him off in Alaska where he will start his junior hockey career.
I glance out the window — and there they are.
The Aurora Borealis, shimmering across the Canadian 🇨🇦 sky like something almost unreal. Waves of green light, dancing and pulsing right out my window as if the heavens were putting on a private show.
I was speechless.
I’ve seen the Northern Lights many times since (even three times from my own backyard) but they’ve never danced quite like they did in that night sky. Maybe it was the altitude. Maybe it was the stillness. Maybe it was simply the magic of a first.
I woke up my boys — including my oldest, who turned 21 on that very flight — and had them lean over for a peek. It wasn’t as easy from the middle and aisle seats, but they caught enough to know it was special.
While the rest of the plane slept, those dancing green lights gave me a once-in-a-lifetime, front-row performance.
And I’ll never forget it.💚
#3. Portland Head Light in New England — Cape Elizabeth, Maine
There are more than 60 lighthouses scattered along the rugged coast of Maine, and Portland Head Light was one worth seeing!
Commissioned by George Washington in 1791, it stands as Maine’s oldest lighthouse — steadfast, timeless, watching over the Atlantic for more than two centuries.
As we toured the former keeper’s quarters (now a museum) and wandered through the gift shop, we struck up a conversation with a man visiting with his family. Casual at first… until he mentioned he had once been the light keeper there. Of all the people we could have met that day!
Standing inside those historic walls, listening to someone who had actually lived the life — tending the light, keeping watch over the sea — made the experience feel personal.
One of the unexpected gifts of watching our son play junior hockey was the travel that came with it. While he skated for the Kenai River Brown Bears out of Soldotna/Kenai, Alaska, the team traveled across the continental U.S., and we happily followed when we could. That particular series brought us to Lewiston, Maine where we arrived early to explore Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
And then came the hockey 🏒 and one of my favorite series!
That trip had everything: history, stunning fall New England color🍁, and the joy of watching your child chase a dream.
Some places you visit. Others stay with you. Our Maine memories definitely stayed.
Christina’s Journey Journal 