Twenty years ago today I slid my 30-year-old Grumman canoe into a small creek called the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota, plopped my 59-year-old body into it and began my paddling trip to New Orleans.  I slowed the pace of my life to three mph for the next three and a half extraordinary months and have never enjoyed myself more. 

And that exquisite feeling behind the grin I had on my face when I pulled ashore in New Orleans has never left my soul.

For someone like me, as a child and through my teens being uncomfortable turning a corner without knowing what’s there, it was an uncharacteristic leap into the unknown armed only with a belief that things will work out.  They not only did, but they did so incredibly well.  At the end, I had the same feeling I’d had after three years in Ethiopia with the Peace Corps:  There’s nothing I can’t handle now! 

That attitude served me well after Ethiopia when I embarked on a year-long trip from Nepal to Norway by land.  I picked up enough of languages along the way to make do and felt comfortable wherever I happened to be.

It also helped immensely back in the workplace after the river trip. The tedious morning meetings were in a room formerly occupied by the travel department.  A huge map of the U.S. covered one entire wall. 

And there, every day, in the form of a blue squiggly line stretching from ceiling to floor, was my trip.

Bring it on!

If you want to read about the river trip and see the photos, start here.