Have you ever come across a photo from your past and not been able to take your eyes off of it? I recently found a mesmerizing image from eight years ago. I am sitting in an autorickshaw in Rishikesh, India, between two fellow travelers. I remember the exact moment it was taken, and the unfettered joy I felt.
Maybe it was the shirodhara treatment I’d had. Or the handful of unlabeled over-the-counter antibiotics I’d taken a friend’s word for the night before. Or the overwhelming refreshment of Rishikesh, where the streets are clean and the Ganges headwaters run with the clear ice blue of glacier melt. (We did get chased down the street by monkeys, but that may have added to the invigoration—the adrenaline rush of the pursuit followed by the relief of escape).
The rickshaw wasn’t taking us anywhere particularly special, I think; just to get the best lassi in the world (and it was). After floating on the Ganges past the ghats in Varanasi, sitting under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, and marveling at the stunning mosaics of semi-precious stones in the Taj Mahal (the architecture was lovely, but I just kept staring at the walls!), the trip was winding down. The sightseeing was over; it was time to just be, to rest, to let it all soak in before the transition to the long journey home—a vast geographic and experiential distance.
I have always loved the thrill of travel—the joy of being on the move, every single experience something new. In India, every blink of the eye, every inhale, every sound presented a different perspective from anything that I’d known before, and it brought me completely alive. Despite the harsh realities of life all around me, I had many moments of profound joy and wonder. Staring at the rickshaw photo, I started to feel melancholy, wondering, where is that kind of ecstatic joy in my life today?
The week before the photo was taken, had a profound experience in Varanasi: in a temple, I was suddenly overcome with intense emotion. Bells started ringing in all directions, someone started playing a drum set, and without warning I broke open, weeping uncontrollably. People stared, not in confusion, but with a curious understanding. As if this type of thing happens there all the time. Afterward I felt cleansed and clear, from the inside out. For the next few days, I walked a little more softly, worried a little less, judged a little less, gorged myself on the delicious food a little less.
Hedonist that I am, I’m tempted to think I just need to repeat that trip, go back to India, get myself another healing. Aside from the sadly greedy, grasping nature of the urge, I also know that it probably won’t work. I don’t think we can have these things when we seek them, want them, expect them. It is in the not-seeking that these experiences can take us by surprise, and in the surprising give us the change we need. Just like earthquakes: they never, ever happen when I am thinking about them.
Also, I am wrong—there have been countless moments of joy and adventure in my life since my trip to India eight years ago; there just isn’t anyone there taking my photo to record it. Field work in the High Sierra, the Big Sur Coast, and everywhere in between; camping under the Milky Way in the vast desert; the magic of living in Yosemite Valley in all four seasons; the nervous system-soothing tropical ocean breezes in Mexico: all places where I have taken several moments to stop and think, “what did I do to deserve this amazing life?” Alongside every single one of these memories are also recollections of the accompanying trials: the poison oak rashes, the muscle cramps, the cactus spines, the trenchfoot, the hapless visitors, the sunburn. This bitterness is what makes the moments of joy possible.
When I came across the Rishikesh rickshaw photo, I couldn’t stop staring into the eyes of my eight-years-younger self. The still image is full of movement. The people next to me are slightly blurry. But there I am in the middle, the bindi on my forehead the centerpiece. My smile of the rare, genuine sort. My eyes clear blue as glacial ice. In that instant, I am fully awake, aware, alive, and present in what is.
I may have looked just as joyful if you had taken a picture of me last summer as I was driving on a solo roadtrip across the Utah desert, singing to Dolly Parton with electricity in my veins and not a care in the world—no illicit substances required. The day before, I had just wrapped up a short but intense field season, and left the heat, the wildfire smoke, and the group dynamics behind for six weeks. Part of the elation was being relieved of the job that I love for a break to see family and friends, and spend some time alone with my thoughts and whatever the open road brought next.
In India, I simply showed up for whatever happened, because I knew I needed to surrender all expectations of comfort and time to travel with sanity. I got pure, unfettered joy as my reward. Today, leveling up this skill will require mustering this attitude while sitting at a computer screen, staring down the barrel of a dank peer review. I’m at my desk, thinking I know exactly what will happen next, how it will play out, but I really and truly don’t.
Travel is wonderful, but what I’ve learned from the joys of travel and adventure is that it’s the mindset of a willingness to be surprised that makes the joy possible. So, even in these long desk days, what if I saw each day as a new adventure, with new eyes, believing that whatever came my way would be a marvel, even if it was unpleasant, because I am alive and each breath is a gift? This time of year, I trade poison oak for peer reviews, sunburn for seasonal affective disorder, sore muscles for restlessness. But life can still be an adventure, even if I don’t leave home.
The Rishikesh autorickshaw ride, February 2014.