What a journey...

"This blog will chronicle that journey as it unfolds. Where precisely I'll end up I 'm not quite sure; how long it will take to get 'there', wherever 'there' is, I don't know. For me it doesn't really matter. I learned long ago that life is a journey, not a destination. From past travels I know that I'm happiest when I'm out on that road to wherever, the road that beckons." 

 I wrote those words on a wintry day back on May 19, 2016 gazing out the window of a small cabin up in the Colorado high country. And yes, May in the Colorado high country can sometimes be warm and sunny and at other times you'd think it was the middle of Winter. I had just retired a month earlier from Pinnacol Assurance, a Colorado-based workers' compensation insurer where I had spent the bulk of my career working in Human Resources. 

Back then my wife and I were planning on setting out for a trip to Alaska because, quite frankly, the wilds of Colorado were just not quite wild enough. Of course, 2016 was also an election year but in May we gave the November Presidential election nary a thought. Even if we had given it much thought we would have guessed that whoever took office after Mr. Obama's eight years would just be more or less more of the same. Little did we know. Little did any of us know. 

I started this blog to chronicle my physical travels in retirement. I've always loved the inherent uncertainty that comes with travel. Even the most pre-planned trip can hit road bumps and I had always found that some of those bumps in the road led us down some of the most interesting paths. Of course the paths that we all travel are not only physical. They can be emotional, cultural, historical, metaphysical - pick your adjective and it most likely will apply to this journey we are all on called Life. We can never be certain when we set off where exactly we will end up. Four years ago I never would have imagined we would arrive at the place we all find ourselves now. 

By late June we had arrived in Fairbanks which is a lovely town on the Tenana river. We weren't done heading North yet, as we had aspirations to get above the Artic Circle on what they euphemistically refer to as the Dalton HIGHWAY. Its also referred to as the 'Haul Road' as it was built to get supplies from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay as they were building the Alaska Pipeline in the mid-1970's. Whatever you call it, the 'Highway' is a two-lane (sometimes) dirt road that is more frequented by Caribou and Artic Fox than by truckers and foolish tourists like me. Despite its fearsome reputation for eating tires and demolishing vehicles we made it above the Artic Circle. Just to be clear, there is no 'circle', no physical line marked out encircling the globe at 66 degrees North Latitude (the position of the Arctic Circle is not fixed and currently runs 66°33′48.4″ north of the Equator. Its latitude depends on the Earth's axial tilt, which fluctuates within a margin of more than 2° over a 41,000-year period, due to tidal forces resulting from the orbit of the Moon. Consequently, the Arctic Circle is currently drifting northwards at a speed of about 15 meters (49 ft) per year.) What there is, at least on the Dalton Highway, is a forlorn sign by which everyone has their picture taken as proof that they were HERE. 

We were not the only folks brave (or stupid) enough to have ventured North that day to stand on the windswept tundra in front of an admittedly very impressive sign. The only other people there with us were a couple who lived in Fairbanks and had driven up to have their picture taken in front of the Artic Circle monument while holding a sign supporting Mr. Donald Trump. These nice folks (and yes, this is back when we were all just Americans and they were indeed very nice) were intent on being recognized as the Farthest North Trump Supporters. They told us they were going to dutifully send their picture into Trump headquarters. Back then I wasn't quite sure the Trump staff would quite know what to do with their picture as I wasn't quite certain the Trump campaign quite realized Alaska is part of the U.S. (in fact, most Alaskans candidly believe, perhaps correctly, that anyone from the lower 48 states really has no comprehension of where Alaska is or what its like to live at the top of the world). 

We took their picture...

At first this couple was somewhat reluctant to talk to us or ask us to take their picture. They had noticed our Colorado license plates poking out of the Dalton Highway mud and assumed that we must be vehement anti-Trumpers. We weren't, at least not yet, and we naively thought they were cute to be making the effort to do what they were doing. It is after all a 400 mile round trip from Fairbanks to the Artic Circle and back which is a pretty impressive jaunt for a photo opportunity.

As I write this blog today I wonder what this couple is thinking after the events in Washington this week. Fairbanks is 4,225 miles from our Nation's Capitol and I don't think I saw either of them in the footage of our fellow Americans storming and rampaging through the hallowed halls of Congress. Granted we're all four years older, our hair slightly more gray, but I'd be surprised if they had day-tripped from Alaska for the privilege of being first to bully their way into the "People's House". Part of me thinks if we could sit down over coffee we might find common ground as fellow Americans, perhaps chuckle as we reminisce over a cold day in June as we took each other's picture. Most of me doesn't believe that is still possible, our separate paths leading to today having diverged too greatly in just four short years. 

and they took ours

None of us in 2016, myself included, had any real clue what we would be seeing in just the first two weeks of 2021, just a couple of days before a new, duly elected President will take office. Nor would we have been able to comprehend that 350,000 of us would be dead due to a new virus. Or that five Americans would have lost their lives this week in an unbelievable clash on the steps and in the chambers of our Nation's Capitol in an unprecedented attack on our democracy spurred on by the Chief Executive sworn to defend it. 

We've seen a lot of things, you and I, in our journey over the last 1,460 days and quite candidly The Road That Beckons has lost some of its luster as of late. And it seems that We the People have lost more than we have gained as the last 48 months have flown by. Whether we can ever recoup what we have lost - our trust in our leaders, our trust in each other, our shared belief in what it means to be American - remains to be seen. 

I'm not a gambler but I do believe in the notion of playing the hand that you're dealt. Right now we've been dealt a pretty miserable hand but its what we have to work with. So far 2021 seems intent on being as brutal as 2020. The primatologist Jane Goodall once said: “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” The couple of thousand who ransacked the Capitol this week have demonstrated the difference they would make, given the chance. Perhaps the rest of us looking down the road ahead can make our voices heard and make it clear we choose a different path. 

Safe travels.