I’ll be turning sixty-five in just a few short weeks and I’ve been mulling over how to mark the occasion. It will also be the end of my Year of the Child weekly blog-writing initiative. Historically, after a project is complete, I feel drawn to travel. Usually it would be a work project and the end of a lucrative contract, not an inner-focused endeavour such as my blog. But this is the completion of a significant commitment and I feel the familiar pull to get away and breathe new air.

My first real travel experience was in 1964. I was nine years old when our parents took my brother Marc, sister Nancy and me to Hawaii for the Christmas holidays. I was kept well out of the loop until just a few weeks prior to our departure. It was Nancy that got the privilege of telling me the exciting news. I was a little miffed at being kept in the dark but was placated when I saw the outfits she and Mum had secretly been sewing for the trip—cotton skirts and matching sleeveless tops for me that I absolutely adored.

The memory of the warm scented air that greeted us in Honolulu remains with me still. It was like entering a different world! We were all the same people though, and with that came the inevitable hiccups. News from home informed us that a record-breaking snowfall was underway and Dad started fretting about his fishing boat under the weight of all that snow. He was glued to the news and I remember being heartsick at missing this unparalleled weather event. Mum tried to cheer us up by renting surfboards on Christmas Day but that didn’t really cut it either. We were all a little homesick and not sure how to manage it.

Despite the trials of being far from home, travel has been a source of growth and renewal for me ever since. At age fourteen, when Mum got concerned that my boyfriend and I were getting too serious, she shipped me off with my sister Abby to spend a month in England. We stayed at Anthony’s, the father of her young son. Anthony was an artist, living in a classic row house in Islington that housed his printmaking studio in the back garden. I loved the bohemian lifestyle and, at Ant’s urging, promptly traded in my carefully crafted kiss-curls (that I glued to my cheeks with dippity-do and scotch-taped at night for safe measure) for au natural curly locks. Again, smells remain forefront—this time the London Underground with its unforgettable aroma of dust, metal and who-knows-what-else that still stirs my teenage heart.

A couple of memorable trips were with my now-deceased friend Derek Youngs. He was a peace walker and we travelled first to South Africa and Zimbabwe in 1997, and then again to Israel and Palestine in 2002. Sometimes, before a global adventure, I would pack all my belongings into storage and leave my return open-ended. I imagined my life as a deck of cards being thrown up into the air. Where would they land?

People love to travel for all kinds of reasons, as this article attests to. In recent years my forays have largely been dictated by personal development programs or retreats, and I’ve already lined up some of these for 2020. But with the completion of my blog-writing year I feel the need to do something special for my inner little girl who I’ve been coaxing out of the shadows for the last eleven months.

At the encouragement of friends, I took the leap and booked a plane ticket. I leave YVR at the crack of dawn on birthday morning, arriving later that afternoon in Loreto, Mexico. My dear friend Lynn will meet me and then we’ll head to the beach where her parents are camped a few miles outside of town. It sounds a lot like my beloved Pachena Bay, where I camped for eight days this past September. That trip brought parts of me alive that I’d long forgotten, and I trust that the sunny skies of Mexico will help further that emergence!

What are your most important reasons to travel? Let me know, I’d love to hear!