Anacapa Island, Channel Islands National Park, California -- Kayaking in the open sea is far more hazardous than paddling in a mountain lake. I flipped here, too, but at the launching point, where I could get back into my craft and bail out the water with a hand pump. (photo by Charles Weng)

The Journey Continues

Fresh from the smoldering ruins of Kandahar and Baghdad, terror has renewed its presence in Riyadh, Jerusalem and Casablanca. Since SARS made its deadly debut in Asia, the surgical mask-wearing residents of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei and (belatedly) Beijing have been living under siege. Amongst them are my elderly parents, who did not fly to San Diego as planned to attend the wedding of a nephew. 

My father, an avid traveler himself, resignedly admonished me against my annual transoceanic flights. I did not tell him immediately of a more recent brush with danger.

During the sunny afternoon of May 4th, cousin Mark and I were paddling in Silverwood Lake, a large, scenic reservoir nestled in the San Bernadino Mountains of southern California, the westernmost link in a chain of natural and dammed tarns that includes Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake. 

Our daylong idyll ended abruptly when we succumbed to the strong, ocean-like waves at the deepest section of the lake. With just our heads above the cool, undulating water, we hung onto our capsized kayaks until a family of three in their motorboat and the local park ranger came to our rescue.

I really do not wish to catalogue this experience as yet another one of my near-disasters (see a final word here in this site). Aside from the initial panic of randomly executing an underwater backward somersault, I felt no fear for myself, but only worry -- for Mark, my immediate family, and my kayaking gear. (Besides pulling us from the lake, our rescuers also retrieved our paddles.)

Towards the end of our ordeal, I detected a facetious tone in Mark as he asked me how I felt about having almost died. "Alive" was my immediate answer in a breath of exhaustion. Upon reflection, it would not have been any different. 

"You're going to New Zealand! Are you excited?"

"As excited as breathing," I replied, sounding unintentionally facetious. "It's just what I do."

For her, it might sound like the petulance of a well-traveled princeling, taking his privilege of global mobility completely for granted. For me, it was an existential statement. World travel may not be my true career, but it is my life, be it thirty or so days of glory out of an entire year.

Well, I'm off again. British Airways had just posted their best summer fares yet for flights between Los Angeles and Heathrow, while throwing in a free night at a four-star hotel in Kensington. Ryanair, touting its fleeting supremacy over arch-rival Easyjet in terms of profitability, gave away 60,000 free return flights in a day -- I caught one between London Stansted and Sandefjord, Norway, paying only about $40 for the taxes and airport fees. The deal from Scandinavian Airlines for flights between Oslo and Bodø was quite reasonable, too. 

Thus circumstances were favorable towards fulfilling a promise I made to myself two years ago: to sleep in a rorbu, or fisherman's cabin, perched along the magnificently surreal shores of the Lofoten islands.

My father needs not worry. So long as I return safe and sound, he is sure to expect me to go on living my life as I see fit.