The question occasionally arises in media that asks, “What would you do if you were confronted with your imminent demise?” Well, neither Caroline nor I am facing that right now that we are aware of, but we do have a somewhat similar question in front of us that asks, “What must you do or see in this corner of the planet if you were moving to the other side of it in the future?” What places are so important that should you no longer live in that country or state, it would become a hardship to return just for that one location? For example, imagine you went to Paris but were unable to visit the Louvre.
So we’ve scoured the map, and the first glaring omission is that we’ve never visited Central or South America. Closer to home, the list turns out to be quite short. We only identified four places we’ve never been to, three destinations we’d like to visit again, and two events we’d like to catch. They are in the order I just listed above: Lowell Observatory and the Arboretum in Flagstaff, Arizona, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and taking the Amtrak from old Route 66 in Arizona into the Great Plains. Our return visits would bring us back to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, the Oregon Coast, and relatively low on the list of priorities for culinary reasons, Oki Dog, Shakey’s, and the Northwoods Inn all in the Los Angeles area. Finally, the events include the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Rhinebeck Sheep & Wood Festival held in New York state. That’s it for the United States
From Mexico south and Central America, we have three or four things on our list, including kayaking in the Sea of Cortez among the whales, a textile tour in Peru, and another textile tour in either Oaxaca or Chiapas, Mexico. With that, we’ll feel we did justice to seeing the world around us while we lived in America. For anyone who’d point out that a visit or two to points south of us would never do justice to understanding an iota of our southern neighbors, we are well aware of that, but life is too short to ever know everywhere.
Sure, we’d like just one more visit to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and a number of other national parks, but lodging in those parks is already sold out for 2021. Believe it or not, we’ve seen the majority of America, and while we’ve never been to Vancouver, Canada, or taken in Butchart Gardens in Victoria, we’re okay with that.
After 26 years in America, we are approaching the need to immerse ourselves in something else. The natural beauty and ease of meeting people are certainly attractive, but the detractors are growing too big to ignore. The prices of housing, health care, and transportation will garrote our retirement experience or demand that we work to death. That ugly idea of working to death is beyond the pale and feels inhumane, and so we’ll be looking at when our time in America has to come to an end and have another new beginning where limited resources can go further. After all, this is all about going further.
Image licensed under Creative Commons titled “Old Globe” by ToastyKen