a letter to Nancy

Being a 15-year-old and hearing all the talk about terrorist acts really scares me. Like any other 15-year-old I really get excited because of traveling. But with all this terrorism going on I would really like to know where it would be safe to go? I understand there are no guarantees.

--Nancy Espinoza, student, Notre Dame Academy, Los Angeles You are right, Nancy, there are no safe roads, no guarantees. Only the joy of discovering the unknown. Each day is a new adventure, a new experience, and so there are no promises. It comes to all of us that life itself is a risk.

Each moment begins as a mystery with joys, hopes and fears in a pattern that changes constantly. Otherwise there would be no peaks, no valleys. Only boredom.

The second hand sweeps ahead while calendar pages fall like the leaves of an autumn afternoon. Impatiently, life goes on and the tragedy of this adventure is failing to live each precious moment to its fullest. To do otherwise is merely to exist. You’d be surprised how swiftly youth is lost on advancing years, so spend those moments wisely, Nancy, without unnecessary fear. This isn’t to say that one should be foolhardy; rather it means there is no road that guarantees a safe arrival. In life, risk is a constant companion.

It is a different world from the one in which I grew up. These were the post-Depression years and vacations and travel were only dreams for us. Instead of camp, I spent my summers swimming at North Hollywood Park, so that by the end of summer I had a sunburned nose and hair that had turned green from too much chlorine in the water. Even so, the world was simpler and safer then. At night the heavens over San Fernando Valley lit up with stars (yes, we could still see the Milky Way) and the moon shone like a planet in our own backyard and the crickets chorused late into the night.

The jet airplane didn’t exist then, and as a result Europe, the Orient, the South Seas and South America were dreams discovered only in the pages of a textbook, not travel brochures. I was fascinated with Egypt; I dreamed of traveling down the Nile and visiting the Sphinx and the Pyramids. This of course was the impossible dream. Who could imagine a day when such wonders could be reached in mere hours in airplanes that leave contrails like the streak of chalk on a blackboard?

Surely the world was safer then, but also, Nancy, it wasn’t nearly as exciting. In one way or another, one pays for everything in this life, and so we surrendered simple pleasures for adventure and the opportunity to discover distant destinations that previously were mere fantasies.

I’m not so sure that those times of daydreaming weren’t best after all, but they are finished and so I am impatient to get on with the business of living, so that when it is over, in the final hours, I won’t mourn the unspent moments.

No, there are no safe roads and it would be foolish to think otherwise, and so life without risk is meaningless. Thousands of Americans unnecessarily canceled trips to Europe this last summer out of fear of terrorists, even though the chance of coming face to face with one of these troubled souls must rank somewhere on the scoreboard with beating the odds at Monte Carlo. This is true, even with the violence in Paris in recent weeks.

Like you, Nancy, I continue to search for that perfect place, that peaceful destination where pollution and crime don’t exist, nor the threat of nuclear annihilation. So for a few moments, I’ll repeat myself and describe those destinations that have been discussed on other Sundays, retreats where the world indeed is gentler, with a promise of more peaceful tomorrows.

The perfect place, of course, remains in the eye of the beholder. Still, one needn’t travel far to find gentle surroundings. I’m thinking of the storm-tossed Mendocino coast north of San Francisco, a haunting reminder of faraway New England. Winter winds buffet the land and gales sweep down from Alaska, churning up great waves that deposit driftwood on storm-battered beaches. Gnarled oaks drip with Spanish moss and the air is rich with the fragrance of eucalyptus.

Painters and poets are inspired by the fury of the sea and the voice of the wind, the fog horns and the whistling buoys that bob beyond the breaker line. Geraniums bloom in the window boxes of old Victorians and the salty taste of the sea is carried by the ocean wind.

You asked for replays of my favorite destinations, Nancy: I believe you would be fascinated with Bali, the storied island that’s bathed by the Indian Ocean and the Java Sea. Dawn breaks each day like a curtain rising on creation. Along dozens of paths Hindu women march forward, carrying food offerings and flowers to the gods whose spirits occupy tens of thousands of temples.

On their island, terror is a stranger, this garden that’s choked with coconut palms, orange and banana trees. Rice paddies rise toward the heavens, framed by smoking volcanoes; rivers and streams hurry toward the sea and the sky overhead is as blue as the earth is green.

With darkness, the lights of thousands of coconut lamps flicker in villages around the entire island. Bathed by tropical breezes, Bali is a mystical land of infinite beauty where one may travel without fear, without terror.

Islands, I find, are havens of that illusive prize, peace, and so there are others on this list I’ve prepared for you. In the South Seas there is Rarotonga where years ago the Matson liners Mariposa and the Monterey called once a month and the natives would row out in their outriggers, singing to the passengers in a scene reminiscent of a 1930s Hollywood film.

‘Flying Into Yesterday’

When I last saw Rarotonga, a man named Moke drove the island’s only taxi and a room in the town’s ramshackle hotel figured out to a mere few dollars a day, meals included. Now the jet has arrived and new hotels have been built and so Rarotonga will never be quite the same. Still, the pilot for one particular airline tells his passengers, “We’ll be flying into yesterday in just a few minutes.”

I was there in the summer and in the village of Avarua the windows of the Cook Island Trading Co. still displayed Christmas pudding and holiday fruitcakes. Seasons in this Pacific destination change little.

For those wishing to escape deeper into the backwashes of the Pacific, prop planes leave Rarotonga regularly for Aitutaki, an island with a single hotel, no cars and none of the other distractions associated with our brand of civilization. I suspect, Nancy, that you would find Aitutaki fascinating.

It is difficult to write about islands without bringing up the legendary Aggie Grey and her hotel at Apia on the Pacific island of Upolu in Western Samoa. The rain pounds on the roof and the air smells fresh and the heavens explode with thunder. Aggie--her guests are a mixture of Americans, Australians and New Zealanders--opened her hotel in the early ‘40s with only three rooms.

Today you wouldn’t find a terrorist within a mile of Western Samoa, Nancy. The only dangers are taxis that rattle through dozens of Samoan villages where trade winds blow through open fales and pigs cross the highway and youngsters swim naked in the ocean.

Terrorists have bypassed Bora Bora as well, the island James Michener fell in love with when he wrote “Tales of the South Pacific.” Said Michener: “Everyone who has been there wants to go back.” It comes to my mind each time I am caught up in one of those agonizing traffic snarls on a Los Angles freeway.

The first time I visited Bora Bora, I flew from Tahiti in a vintage flying boat. Fans spun in the ceiling and we barely skimmed the water. The plane was held together with loose rivets and hope, but it was a memorable adventure. I’m going back soon and I suppose I’ll find changes. A few more taxis perhaps; maybe TV antennas poking up from thatched roofs. Nothing, though, could disturb the distant reef and the loveliest lagoon on Earth--with water the color of rainbows.

A Medieval Monument

Not all places are as safe from violence as Bora Bora, Nancy, although I doubt seriously that you’d feel threatened in Rothenburg, a little village on Germany’s Romantic Road between Fussen and Wurzburg. A mood that’s pure magic takes over as you enter the old walled city and leave behind the 20th-Century frustrations. As one of Germany’s finest preserved medieval cities, Rothenburg is a maze of narrow, cobbled streets and ancient gabled houses.

You get the idea, Nancy, that Walt Disney might have created the scene. Within the walls of Rothenburg not a single modern structure disturbs the view; Rothenburg remains a medieval monument where not a stone can be turned without permission. As a result, the old walled city catches the fancy of every dreamer who makes this pilgrimage along Germany’s Romantic Road.

It would be shameful to overlook Durnstein in our quest for a destination free from terrorists. Only a few miles outside Vienna, the village is the scene on Sundays of concerts by oompah bands and visitors who sip wines on the terrace of Schloss Durnstein, the ancient castle-hotel facing the Danube with its steamers, barges and pleasure boats.

Entering Durnstein, Nancy, is like reliving a Grimms fairy tale. Durnstein is crowded with ancient buildings that rise beside a narrow, cobbled street where fragrant breezes stir and cathedral bells toll and Strauss waltzes echo through the alleys and corridors of this village that inspires poets and painters rather than terrorists and mad adventurers.

I felt a similar sense of well-being in Cozumel, the Caribbean island a dozen miles off Mexico’s primitive Yucatan Peninsula. The last time I visited Cozumel there were still only a few taxis. Chickens ran in the streets and got in the way of drivers. The drivers would fume and honk their horns but it did no good. The chickens took their time crossing the road. Still, I noticed changes.

They’d built a modern air terminal with duty-free shops and a fast-service restaurant, and several new hotels were part of the scene. But a certain mood remains that keeps this a favorite destination of mine. Although the island is 30 miles long and a dozen miles wide, there is but one town, San Miguel, which is bleached white by the tropical sun. Breezes blow across Cozumel from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico and the sunsets are absolutely startling.

And there is Nova Scotia, Canada’s fairest province with its weathered barns and farmhouses and white-steepled churches that lie scattered across miles of rolling hills from Yarmouth to Cape Breton. Hemmed in by a rock-bound coast, they face country lanes that unfold alongside rivers, streams, apple orchards and open fields of wind-blown grass where farmers welcome vacationers in a setting that appears like a scene out of 19th-Century rural America.

In the Margaree Valley near the Cabot trail, Mary and Laird Hart have been welcoming guests to their Heart of Harts farm for 37 years. You asked about a safe place to travel, Nancy: In the Margaree Valley no one locks a door, not even at night. No not even when they’re gone.

Stream and Dreams

Barely out the back door of the Hart’s farm flows a trout stream, and beyond that a salmon river rushes toward the Atlantic. It is the sort of place where a child can run wild through grassy fields or catch a trout off a bridge or just lie beside a stream and dream. In this incredibly green valley, vacationers sit in rocking chairs and fill their souls with scenes of wooded hills and star-filled nights.

A safe place? There comes to mind Constitution Oak Farm in Kent, Conn., with the fragrance of new-mown hay and berry bushes that crawl alongside a country lane. Here, too, the door remains unlocked and stars blaze in the heavens and the proprietor smiles when asked if she’s afraid.

“Fear,” she says. “What is there to fear?”

Outside the 18-room farmhouse stands a red barn and maple trees that spread their shade across rolling hills and a huge barrel blooming with violets. From this serene setting, the world seems less troubled, Nancy. I recall these words framed on the wall of my bedroom:

Sleep sweet within this room, our guest who thou art--let no mournful yesterdays disturb thy peaceful heart.

Forget thyself and all the world, put out each garish light.

The stars are shining overhead, sleep sweet, good night, good night.

As I said earlier, Nancy, life offers no guarantees--only the joy of discovering the unknown. So spend wisely the precious years of youth.