Keepin On', Walkin' On

I can still see my fifth grade teacher, Miss Kretschman, back in that small town school in rural Wisconsin, standing in front of the room at the world map that pulled down from the ceiling, as she pointed out a far away land called Nepal. I sat at a wooden desk by a window that I loved to look out of while dreaming my dreams. Sitting at that old wooden desk, the kind with a hinged top and an ink well, and surrounded by the everyday humdrum subjects of arithmetic, reading, and writing, my world took on a new dimension as the teacher and the map introduced the country of Nepal. Then, after reading about it in my geography book, my imagination soared and suddenly I stood amid the snowy peaks of the mysterious Himalayas. Yaks, sherpas, yetis, forbidding peaks and fertile valleys -- someday, I told myself, I would go and see them for myself. Over the next forty-five years I dreamed of fulfilling that childhood fantasy, only to have those dreams crash when handed a chilling medical diagnosis. Despite, or perhaps because of this diagnosis, I determined to overcome my limitations, and in the years that followed, I not only scaled the Himalayas but spent twenty years of adventure travel - climbing mountains and rafting rivers on six continents. In the pursuit of my childhood dream, I discovered not only personal fulfillment, but the shared humanity that binds us.