Have Faith, The Grass Is Already Green Enough

Where are you going next? What are you going to do when you get there? Where are you going after that? These are questions I’m frequently asked. I get it. It’s a vacation mindset. You’re at work talking about what cool thing you’ll do when given the chance to escape the day in, day out world in which you live. It’s easy to focus on the next thing on the list. But that isn’t my journey. It’s not how I’m choosing to approach this.

Instead I’m focused on my present. Where am I? What am I doing right now? How am I influencing the world around me? What is the framework I use as I am traveling? My journey is absolutely a journey of self fulfillment and the opportunity to see and experience as much as I can in each place I visit, but much of that fulfillment is derived through helping and having an impact on those around me. Listening, sharing and giving so that in any small way I can help relieve a burden, leverage my experiences to make another’s life a little bit easier or simply give a bit of my time to fill a need.

The areas I plan to visit are generally laid out in advance. I do not, however, load my time with events and activities. While I might get concert tickets or make plans to visit with friends, I also leave plenty of flexible time (“space”). Now of course a lot of that comes from my illness and the fact that I have so many days in which my activity is extremely limited or non existent. But I also use that time to figure out and take advantage of unexpected opportunities. Our time in Utah was a perfect example.

St. George

Everyone that has been to St. George, including my youngest son, have raved of the beauty of the area surrounding this town so we made it the first stop on leaving Arizona. Located in southern Utah near the Nevada border it is close to numerous parks and is a hotbed for people with active lifestyles. Hiking, biking, sightseeing, exploring, you name it. We made this our first location to explore this Spring.

We found a great disbursed camping area about 10 minutes east of Hurricane and grabbed this great spot. It was only 20-30 minutes from the entrance to Zion National Park, too.

Ironman

Yes, I have a bucket list. One of the items on my list was, yes was, to attend the Ironman World Championships, which are always held in Hawaii every year. So as we were driving into St. George I was completely perplexed when we saw all sorts of signs touting the Ironman World Championship in St. George. Turns out that they postponed the 2021 race due to COVID and relocated it to St. George. Better yet, we were going to be in town for the race!!!

The days leading up to an Ironman race can be really fun. They set up an athlete’s village, hold events, sell swag and host speakers. I completed Ironman Canada in 2014 and one of the things that inspired me to race was watching Craig Alexander win multiple World Championships. If you know my story then you know that after all of the surgeries and complications it was my mental and physical conditioning that allowed me to survive against horrible odds, so in a way you could say I owe my life to Craig.

Crowie!!!

Craig happened to be speaking at an event so I headed into town to attend. I arrived early and was walking around the village when I looked over and saw Craig ”Crowie” Alexander standing next to a booth.

What an incredibly gracious and humble person he is. I walked over and introduced myself, apologizing for interrupting his conversation. I gave him the elevator speech of what happened to me and thanked him for being part of the inspiration that helped me survive. We ended up speaking for quite awhile. It was such a wonderful interaction and in a way brought a little unexpected closure for me. I never know from one day to the next what will happen but the possibilities are endless if I pay attention.

Oh yeah, the race was incredible. Watching the best in the world compete was amazing!

Best Friends

As I mentioned, one of the things we try to do as we travel is look for ways to contribute and help others. One of the easy ways is to participate in Patriot Guard Riders missions since we are members. But we also look for any other ways we can help along the way.

There is a little town on the east side of Zion National Park called Kanab. It happens to be the home of the largest no-kill animal sanctuary in the country. The Best Friends Animal Sanctuary houses over 1,600 animals at any given time and is always in need of help. We volunteered a couple of our days to take dogs on walks and car excursions to help keep them socialized and exercised and loved every minute of it. If you are ever in the area give them a call or check out their website. Volunteer opportunities abound!

Zion National Park

This is the planned part of this stop. Zion National Park is one of those places that everyone says is a must see but for some reason can’t seem to adequately explain why. I am not going to go into the park in what is already a too long blog post, but follow this link and I will do my best to show you why Zion is a must visit destination and should be on everyone’s bucket list.

You Gotta Have Faith

The point I am trying to make with this post is to give yourself space. We all have a tendency to over-schedule our lives, to have everything planned out so we don’t miss one minute, and in the process we don’t leave ourselves the space to let life happen. Yes, we planned going to St. George and visiting Zion. But almost everything I just told you about (which is a small fraction of what we experienced) was a result of leaving space to explore, to learn, to have faith that fun, fascinating and rewarding things would come our way. Give yourself some space but don’t waste it. Schedule gaps but then, as Ted Lasso would say, be curious.