My travel dreams are bigger than my courage.

When I dream of all the travel adventures I want to have, I tend to dream big. I ignore practicalities. I ignore the need for money, or food, or to feel safe and secure. I ignore the fact that I’m not the most athletic or the fact that what I want to do might not be physically possible.

For example, I recently found photographs for the world’s most remote restaurant and what looks to me like the world’s most treacherous trail to get there (I don’t know if it’s real or not, but I like to think it is). I look at these photos and I imagine myself, sliding along the boxcar, clasping the chains as I stroll along above the precipice, climb up the steep steps, and finally arrive exhausted and starving at my destination. It would be one of those amazing experiences that you talk about for the rest of your life; something you can look back on and say, hell, yeah, I did that.

Then, I remember the time that I went hiking up Flattop in Alaska with my family. It was so foggy that I ended up heading off on the wrong trail, which turned out not to be a trail at all, so I end up climbing up a dirt face, instead of the trail, which I have to hold on to with nothing but my fingertips and my tippy toes. My aunt’s trying to coach me with gentle words; my brother’s tossing pebbles down in my direction; and I’m hugging the rocks and crying, because I’m too terrified to either go up or down because I’m sure (absolutely positive, in fact) that I’m going to fall. I struggle my way up and collapse onto the top, and feel a surge of relief and embarrassment as I realize that I was terrified of something that was not that big a deal after all.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. There was definitely a sense of accomplishment.

However, I do have to recognize that Flattop is a tiny, insignificant pinprick on the surface of the earth compared to what the challenge of the world’s most remote restaurant would represent to me. (Not to mention that I have a reputation for being a klutz.) As much as I would love to experience something like that, the reality is that I would probably chicken out before I even begin, and getting stuck on a remote rock face in China, neither able to go up or down, is not so very appealing in the physical reality of the matter.

I don’t write off these travel dreams, however. Because while they may be impracticable and improbable and highly unlikely, they are far from impossible. As Shel Silverstein would say, Listen to the mustn’ts the couldn’ts the shouldn’t the won’t, but then “listen close to me. Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”

So, I’m going to keep dreaming big, and maybe someday, they’ll come true.