“What’s Your Favorite?”
A question so often asked by strangers upon first learning what I do for a living. They find out the lifestyle, hear the stories, begin to understand the travels and then they ask,
“What’s your favorite?”
What they haven’t been able to come to understand in such a short time is that there is no possible way that there could be a favorite. With so many adventures of such differing variety, how could I pick one single moment to rein above them all? How could I sort through days of pure joy, of jaw dropping, awe inspiring, marvel?
Instead, I just default to my standard answer of, “Alaska.” It’s a safe answer that most everyone can under why I would say that even if they’ve never been. They have their knowledge from the Discovery Channel about what it must be like there and that’s that. It’s a satisfying answer and one that is not a lie, but not necessarily the whole truth.
It is only part of the answer because how could I begin to explain to them the wonders of our country? How could I tell someone how magical a sunrise is, glinting off a lab’s eye, reflections dancing through the flooded timber of Arkansas? How could I tell them about a life, one eye buried in a viewfinder, seeing the world in a way their brain could not wrap itself around in any timely fashion? How would I explain the distant bugles, growling through the mountains, getting closer with every silent step? How do I begin to give them the comprehension of the coarse, thick, gritty hair of still warm buffalo laying in the middle of a sun kissed river valley? How should I explain the feeling of watching your friend experience their own dreams among the Texas cactus? How do I even begin to tell the tale of what it means to go back to a place so sacred in my family it almost brings a tear to my eye just thinking of the memories throughout the years?
So when someone asks me a simple question, they by default get an answer of similar merit. But, if you truly want to know the answers to those questions then I suggest clearing your schedule for a while.
It’s been one hell of a year.
