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volcanoes and earthquakes alike. In fact, Chile claims the world’s largest recorded quake, a 9.3 (Richter scale) in 1960, which wreaked havoc on a third of the country. Compared to that monster, the morning’s temblor was a modest “house call” – but try telling that to a stomach that feels like an over-caffeinated roller coaster or a pair of eyes convinced that the apartment walls are made of silly-putty. Minutes after the quake, the swimming pool of a European consulate next door was still shaking like jelly, and the myriad car alarms from surrounding embassies were all baying in a cacophonous symphony.
Needless to say, I was shook up. Not from conscious thoughts, because I knew everything was OK; rather, it was the chattering protests from that place in each of us that doesn’t like the tidy order of our personal Universe shaken, rattled, and rolled. Our Inner Navigator, it seems, has its own ideas about what stability and permanence are.
After refilling my coffee mug (the previous contents now decorating the couch and rug), I resumed my reverie, but with a little bit more intensity of focus than before.
For some time, I had been considering what to do if and when Alexis and I returned to the U.S. I must admit that the ol’ Work-Play-Work conundrum had always been somewhat of a recurring theme for me. As such, this current layover wasn’t the first time I had turned the career tables upside down. Like an endless game of match-point badminton, it seems that the classically trained engineer and corporate-groomed MBA were always vying with the wanderlust-ing Sagittarian scribe for the spotlight. Even getting to my first real job, with the Hewlett Packard Company in Boise, Idaho, required a twisting menagerie of 7,000 miles of North American roadways. The shortest distance between two points may indeed be a straight line, but the most revealing journey to me is usually a wiggly line. I had considered that trip just another form of on-the-job education: the “job” being Life.
Similar sojourns likewise perforated my resume over the next twenty years: long backpacking tours of Australia and New Zealand; explorations of Alaska; trekking adventures in Asia and South America; island hopping in the Mediterranean; and the requisite civilized visits to Europe. Naturally, I explored just about every mountain range, canyon, coastline and prairie I could get my boots, tires, or skis onto in the playgrounds of the U.S. and Canada. I even discovered that large cities have hearts and souls, if one knows how and where to look.
In between (and often during) these jaunts, I was an industrial engineer, a recruiting manager, a sales and marketing director, and a small company owner. I can’t say that I specialized, either. My employers ran the gamut from huge, multinational corporations to mid-sized, regional companies to three-person partnerships (my own); my industries spanned from Computer Systems manufacturing to Public Health software products to Information Technology consulting to Natural Foods importing —I had become a jack-of-many-trades, but a master of none (I had even sold encyclopedias door-to-door in one of the poorest regions of the country, the tobacco country of North Carolina, during my college years!). It seems that my entire career was a revolving door that separated gainful employment from sabbaticals, journeys, explorations, and other sojourns into new places and activities.
I had always been particularly attracted to themes about the earth and her people; that is, our geography, history, politics, literature, and mythology. I loved reading about great explorers and teachers. I got excited seeing how technology – imbued with wisdom and patience – could benefit Humankind. I was mesmerized by the rise and fall of civilizations. I was enthralled by the tapestries of terrain, water,
