{"id":15341,"date":"2021-02-08T20:57:04","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T20:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=15341"},"modified":"2021-02-08T20:57:04","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T20:57:04","slug":"adding-up-to-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2021\/02\/08\/adding-up-to-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"Adding Up To Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JoEllen Collins\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
JoEllen Collins\u2014a longtime resident of the Wood River Valley\u2014is a teacher, writer, fabric artist, choir member and unabashedly proud grandma known as \u201cBibi Jo.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My sense of adventure has changed as I\u2019ve aged, but until recently the thought of volunteering in Africa or checking yet another bucket list entry has popped up, often in dreams or certainly in discussions. Sometimes I yearn to put on my \u201crollerskate feet\u201d and go to some new place far away, spend extended time in colorful towns or vibrant cities, get to know their inhabitants rather than fellow hotel guests, and restore my faith about the good inherent in most of the world.<\/p>\n

Oddly, my recurring recent dreams involve being stuck at journey\u2019s end because people take me late to the airport or there is nowhere to cash enough local money to pay an imagined departure fee. In most of my dreams, oddly, my \u201cdaddy\u201d is waiting for me at an airport near my teen-aged home. I can\u2019t call him because I can\u2019t punch the correct buttons on some kind of phone\u2014public or cellular\u2014I need local currency coins, or the buttons are not visible, something that prevents me from that reunion.\u00a0These incidences appear about every two nights in varied and strange forms. I always remember my dreams, so I keep a pad of paper nearby in case I get an unbidden but terrific subject for my writing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll let an expert analyze the dreams I have discussed, but I am most interested in why so many of my waking thoughts are about my missed adventures, ones I would take now if it weren\u2019t for my age, financial state, or the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Last week, a friend asked me why, in an era of prop planes, I first chose Ecuador and India as volunteer voyages.\u00a0Why not just book a plane to London, or take a trip to Hawaii on the Lurline?\u00a0I think it goes back to having read beautifully-illustrated books even as a small and often bedridden child, usually with my mother next to me, which portrayed exotic locales like China, Japan, Scandinavia and old European villages with thatched-roof houses and grazing sheep. I knew that someday I would be in those different landscapes, perhaps wearing native clothes: that, indeed, I could become one of the characters in a vibrant story.<\/p>\n

TV didn\u2019t frame my expectations, but I did see wonderful early movies that catered to my fantasies through my teenaged years and more. My best friend and I would drive in my ancient car to Hollywood to attend films.\u00a0Along with American movies like \u201cRoman Holiday\u201d and \u201cAn American in Paris,\u201d we absorbed \u201cforeign films\u201d with subtitles: \u201cRashomon,\u201d Italian masterworks by De Sica and Antonioni, \u201cThe Crucible\u201d in French starring Simone Signoret, \u201cThe Red Balloon\u201d and \u201cThe Umbrellas of Cherbourg.\u201d There is a reason \u201cA Man and A Woman\u201d is still my favorite film of all time. I am not its star, Anouk Aim\u00e9e, but am lucky to have been inspired by the creative images of my generation, with some dreams fulfilled and others fondly remembered. I can walk in memory through Sienna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By JoEllen Collins\u00a0 My sense of adventure has changed as I\u2019ve aged, but until recently the thought of volunteering in Africa or checking yet another bucket list entry has popped up, often in dreams or certainly in discussions. Sometimes I yearn to put on my \u201crollerskate feet\u201d and go to some new place far away, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-on-lifes-terms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15342,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15341\/revisions\/15342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}