Magical Moments
Experiences that energize and sustain us
This year my husband, Andrea, and I will celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary. Next year, I’m hoping to commemorate our 30th by returning to Scotland, where we honeymooned. We have so many fond recollections from that historic country and a handful of snapshots memories that I still find myself reflecting on. One, in particular, was our last night there.
I had used a travel agent to assist me with booking all the hotels. Remember, this was nearly 30 years ago—no internet, no Expedia or Travelocity. Just a travel agent and a fax. Our flight home was early, I think about 7:00 AM, so the travel agent suggested that we stay at an airport hotel for efficiency. Great! I’m all about practical. For the last part of the trip, we had planned on spending several days on the Isle of Skye before driving back to Edinburgh for our return flight home. Perfect! We were all set.
As we were driving through torrential rain from Skye to Edinburgh, I was mapping out our path to the hotel when Andrea piped up that he didn’t want to spend our last night in Scotland near the airport in what was sure to be a dingy, dated hotel. What? It’s all set. It’s perfect. We could roll out the door and straight into the airport. Nope. He had his sights set on a storybook hotel we saw when we were first in Edinburgh. The Caledonian. An iconic fixture on Princes Street with a prime view of majestic Edinburgh Castle perched high on Castle Rock just a stone's throw away.
Andrea, we can’t! We’ve got reservations and we will never get into that hotel. “I’m going to try” was his response. Arghhh! We pulled up to the entrance and he hopped out, with a confident “I’ll be back.” I waited. And waited. Finally, he emerged with a gigantic grin and a bellboy. “We’re in!” We got our bags and started our journey to our room. As we walked down this seemingly endless corridor on the top floor, Andrea chirpily announced how lucky we were to have gotten one of the last rooms. In my mind, we were clearly headed for the end of the hall, so it must be the janitor's closet and the hotel staff was just trying to appease him.
We finally arrived at our destination, the bellboy swung open the door, and there before us was a picture window perfectly framing the castle. It was already nighttime and the castle was exquisitely lit, sparkling through the rain. I was stunned. It was breathtaking. We fell asleep on the last night of our honeymoon staring at what felt like a postcard. I remember Andrea saying, “this is a magical moment.” Indeed it was. It was unforgettable. It would become soul-sustaining.
Fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds of distance run
As you can see, there is a striking difference between Andrea and me...I like to think of myself as his ballast. My nature is to be more reserved, his is to jump out in front. I think I’m a bit like my dad who was quiet and introverted, happy in his dimly lit study and tinkering in his workshop. Andrea, on the other hand, is adventurous and outgoing and, just a month before our wedding, was on an expedition in Africa to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with a man who would become a candle in his life and who inspired our last night dash into The Caledonian: the indomitable Richard “Dick” Bass.
Dick was truly larger than life. He was a poem-reciting, hyper-enthusiastic, perpetual motion machine. Among the many accomplishments of his storied life was being the first man to summit the seven highest mountains on each continent—now known as the Seven Summits—reaching the summit of Mt. Everest when he was 55. Over the 20-plus years of friendship, Dick became a powerfully guiding figure in Andrea’s life and mine by osmosis. I’ve never experienced a person who lived life more fully or who appreciated it more. Time spent with Dick was both exhausting and exhilarating as he shot from one incredible experience to the next. Andrea and I often marveled that despite juggling the stressful life of a ski resort owner (Snowbird in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah) and other business ventures, he maintained a never-waning wanderlust and the gift of looking at the world with childlike wonder and enthusiasm.
Dick would often recite Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” in full, but his favorite excerpt— and his life’s motto—was “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it…” And that’s how he lived. Big moments like the mountain summits. Small moments like a winter’s first snowfall. For Dick, they were all “magical moments.” Points in time that fill the emptied gas tanks of our souls, or as Dick called it, his creative and spiritual reservoir. I remember traveling with him and he would literally stop us and say “look around, this is a magical moment!” So we did… and then Andrea and I would dash to catch up to him.
Mountaintop moments
Ironically, at Mass this past Sunday, our pastor Father Gonzalez touched on this subject, referring to these points in time as “mountaintop moments.” Experiences that give us energy, that sustain us through the everyday grind. Enriching, sometimes transformative experiences, that are the warp and weft of our lives, helping to create who we are, and filling that gas tank we can tap into when times are hard. These aren’t just nice memories; we need these moments. They are essential to our overall health and well-being. Flashes of my magical moments—such as The Caledonian—often come to me during stressful times, as if to rescue my heart and mind from distress and worry and give me the energy to continue.
Create your own
Recently, Andrea and a friend went on a late afternoon/early evening run on a nearby trail he and I often hike in the mornings. He reached the peak around sunset and texted me the picture-perfect view, casually adding there was a group of people sitting around a folding table having wine and appetizers, watching the sunset. What?! At the top of the trail? As a pragmatist, my first thought was “How the heck did they get all those things up there? That took some doing!” Granted, there are homes relatively close, so it’s conceivable it wasn’t the herculean task that first crossed my mind, but it definitely took some planning and doing. After I marveled at the fortitude to haul up a table, chairs and a picnic, the next thought in my mind was “Wow, those people know how to live. Good for them! How admirable!”
It wasn’t an expensive table and chairs. In fact, they were kind of chintzy plastic and the food may have been average. But it surely was a magical moment. A moment that would otherwise be an ordinary moment on a sofa scrolling through social media. The example those intrepid friends set perfectly illustrated the point that we can purposefully create those mountaintop experiences in our daily lives if we comprehend their importance and put in the effort.
Open your eyes and heart
The prodigious experiences aren’t the only ones that fill our gas tanks. These magical moments are all around us if we are open to seeing them.
Another reflection springs to mind. When we first bought our home, there was a couple who lived several houses down from us who religiously walked their dog morning and night, rain or shine. Once in a conversation with the woman, Maureen, I casually mentioned how much I loved seeing the wild parrots in the neighborhood, especially since it’s not common for cities to have wild parrots. There is a slew of urban legend as to why we have wild parrots, but the fact is we have flocks of them and I think it’s amazing. Maureen looked at me with a puzzled look. Parrots?! What parrots? She had never noticed these incredibly loud birds roosting in the tall oaks that line our streets.
Here was a woman who walked her dog at least 30 minutes every day, often twice a day, for years… yet she was oblivious to the unusual phenomenon of wild parrots in an urban neighborhood. Mind you, this was before the distraction of phones. For whatever reason, the simple sights and sounds of our neighborhood—a picturesque area I still pinch myself to be living in, 30 years later—were not in her purview. Looking at life through the grateful lens enables us to see what others miss: sunsets, walks after a cleansing rain, colorful green parrots in trees, and on and on and on. Magical moments.
A work in progress
So do I move heaven and earth to make those magical moments happen? I wish. My first reflex is still the practical hotel near the airport. I freely admit while I do really well with the smaller look-how-beautiful-those-parrots-are moments, it’s those big mountaintop moments I still have to push (with Andrea pulling) myself to do, even though I know how essential they are and I’m always happy I did them.
Several times a year we are guests of some close friends at Dumont Dunes. It’s oddly relaxing just to do nothing but stare at the mesmerizing sand dunes while our son, Alessio, is in hog heaven riding and jumping quads all day. Come late afternoon, it is tradition to go to the top of the dunes to watch the sunset—which is a surreal experience I’m always grateful to have done. But even though we all really enjoy the sunset ride once we are up at the top of the sand, we almost always have to talk ourselves into it… and sometimes we talk ourselves out of it simply because our lazy natures win out! Writing this post reminds me I need to do better in tending to my soul’s reservoir.
Put in the effort
Lavish hotels or exotic vacations aren’t required to make an experience a mountaintop moment; oftentimes it just takes some extra effort to create those soul-filling, energizing memories that ultimately sustain us. Conversely, at other times we simply need to recognize and savor the magical moments that surround us daily… they are there if we are open to receiving them.
Taking a cue from an excerpt of A Rolling Stone—another of Dick’s favorite poems, which is one of Andrea’s as well—the words of Robert Service:
“To scorn all strife and to view all life with the curious eyes of a child;
From the plangent sea to the wild prairie,
From the slum to heart of the Wild.
From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,
From the vast to the greatly small;
For I know the whole for the good is planned,
And I want to see it all.”
I love this! Yes, push through to the Magical Moment, so important for the soul.