Years ago when I started this little blog, it was called True Colours, and my happy place was writing, particularly sitting in an airplane  window seat high above the world, watching the clouds waft through airplane wings.  Waking up at dawn before everyone else on the plane, watching the pastel colors spill across a wide open sky, that was honestly the most exhilarating and inspiring feeling.  There was just something so magical about those moments, about the words that came out in my writing, sharing that with the world in my own little space  here on the internet.  

And for years, I posted regularly here on this little travel blog that eventually morphed into Land of Marvels.  I shared travel trips and it followed my life as I traveled all over the world, visiting all the continents (except Antartica yet!) and exploring in 40+ countries.  And during those years, my husband Nick and I traveled extensively and literally all the time.  But we were young and we were scrappy.  We didn’t have the work responsibilities that we do now, a few days without email wasn’t a huge deal.  A three day weekend was coming, perfect, that was plenty of time to explore a new country.  We didn’t need as much sleep, we didn’t care about the tiny economy airplane seats or the shitty airplane food.  We just went, we just jumped.  $250 roundtrip to Stockholm for a weekend, yes please.  Peru and Machu Picchu on a whim, sure.  

I’m going to stop for just a second in this reminiscing and explain why I’m writing this.  I’m currently sitting high above the world in another airplane seat headed to Tokyo.  The sky right now is the softest shade of blue through my Dreamliner airplane window with technology to dim the glass instead of a sliding shade, the clouds range from whispy horizon lines to huge cotton puffs beneath the airplane wings.  And I’m sitting here writing this heading on a trip to that will include a new destination for me: after a couple days in Tokyo, we’ll head on to Shanghai, China and I’m so beyond excited to explore a new place again – something that we haven’t done for a while.  

This trip has really made me stop and think lately about travel in my life, how it’s impacted my life to this point and how it will going forward.  And I think part of why I’m feeling so emotional about this trip is this: the airplane seat might be nicer now (because we can afford to upgrade a bit), our travel schedule might be different now (we no longer survive on no sleep and shitty airplane food), and the destinations might be different now (because we’ve seen so much of the world, the destinations we choose are often more of convenience than adventure), but this feeling, this exhilaration, this inspiration high above the clouds, man does it bring me back.  

I’ve had more adventures than I deserve, seen the sun rise all over the world, and have spontaneously booked more flights in my lifetime than probably most of the people I know put together, but as I get older, as it gets harder to take days off of work, as life gets crazier and responsibilities grown, travel is still my constant despite the ever changing obstacles.  Travel is the thing that I’ve always wanted.  As my friends were dreaming of babies, I was dreaming of an airplane window view.  We all want different things and it’s taken me a long time to realize, this is the life I always dreamt of and all these years later, I can recognize that I created the life that was meant for me, unapologetically. 

The one piece of advice I often tell young people I meet or when my students ask me about my experiences is to just say yes.  Yes to opportunities, yes to people you like being around, yes to doing what is right for you, yes to following your heart, and a resounding yes to adventure.  

My life looks a lot different these days than it did in my twenties, but the one thing that stays the same is the inspiration I find from seeing this big beautiful world and from the adventures I’ve had that have made me who I am today.  Like when Nick and I hiked up a literal mountain to see a volcano erupting in Iceland, spewing lava in front of us in shades of orange I didn’t actually think existed on this planet or when I walked the streets of Seoul, all alone at five in the morning, and had an epiphany about my life.  Or when we slept on the literal floor of the Toronto airport after our flight to Rome got canceled or sat on the rooftop of a Moroccan riad, having henna applied to my hands in the Saudi style to represent my childhood abroad, hearing the call to prayer ring out again over the city.  Like watching the sun rise over the lake in Udaipur, India in the most perfect pastel colors I couldn’t believe were real or watching orcas dive in and out of the Pacific Ocean in the San Juan Islands of Washington State.  Some adventures were sad too, like staring out over the Seine River in Paris after just finding out my mom was battling breast cancer or all those incredibly beautiful sunsets from my apartment in Hawaii, feeling so utterly alone while Nick was on the other side of the ocean.  

And then there’s the times that make me smile, like when I got a little too tipsy on Rosé at our favorite restaurant in Reykjavik and almost walked into someone else’s apartment on the way home or when we nicknamed my Mom Ilene as her travel persona on a trip to London.  Some memories have moved me deeply too like sitting on the edge of Machu Picchu, looking out over such an ancient place and watching the fog literally tear itself apart to reveal one of the most stunning and overwhelming scenes I’ve ever seen, or the incredible and overwhelming smell of entire fields of lavender in Provence during peak bloom, or the truly intoxicating colors of Autumn in Vermont at peak in the Fall – the landscape literally looks like an oil painting.  

Other adventures were escapes, like our first international trip post COVID quarantines when we escaped to Iceland and stood in front of a massive waterfall under the midnight sun at three in the morning, never feeling more free as I breathed in the cold May air or the night that I called Nick two hours before the flight that I had spontaneously just booked to fly home to Portland from Hawaii. Other adventures happened on their own, like waking up on a redeye flight to Iceland and seeing the bright green aurora dance alongside the airplane wing against the black night sky or things we laugh about now, like when I blew out a tire on our rental car in the middle of nowhere in the Highlands of Scotland.  

Here’s the thing about my years of traveling – it’s literally just who I am.  I feel so honored and grateful to be able to do this and I work damn hard to make it possible.  But at the end of the day, this is me, I have to do this.  I have to sit in this airplane seat looking out over the clouds, I have to breathe in the air on the other side of the globe, I have to see the sun rise across the ocean on the other side of the world. And that’s a huge part of why Land of Marvels still exists, to share what I see, what I feel, and how you can see and feel it too.

I think all these years later, all these countries and cities and continents down the line, travel is literally in my soul.  It’s literally a piece of me and I can’t get enough.  I want more moments like when we climbed up to the Great Wall of China and a soft silent snow fell around us.  I want to keep standing under cherry blossoms that fall like pink snow in Japan.  And I want more moments stopping entire roadtrip itineraries in Iceland to pull over and pet Icelandic horses on the side of the road.  

And how beautiful is that?  All these adventures later, I’m still even more excited for the next one.