New Horizons

A promise I make to myself every summer is to read something from one of my favorite writers, Sigurd Olson.  Olson was a prominent conservationist who helped preserve some of the last remaining wild places in North America. 

The other night, I read “Jumping Off Places,” an essay from his book Runes of the North.  The account features three of his many canoe trips into far-northern Canada when he and his friends were heading out into the unknown.  He describes the feeling of uncertainty just before beginning an adventure into land that they knew only from maps.  In this era before cellphones and satellite phones, Olson knew that any mishap while running unfamiliar rapids or portaging canoes over treacherous ground hundreds of miles away from help would mean disaster.  While I enjoy reading Olson’s account of the trip, nothing could tempt me to be part of such an adventure.

A recent phone call from a close friend reminded me that what constitutes a risk differs from person to person.  Perhaps twenty years ago, my friend and I were attending a conference in Newport, Rhode Island, clearly the most affluent part of the country I’d ever visited.  On a break from meetings, we took a walk in one of the marinas of Newport.  If the mansions on Newport’s coast were awe-inspiring, so were the boats moored there.  A sailor we ran into in the marina pointed to one of the massive sailing yachts and said it was the boat on which John and Jacqueline Kennedy had spent their honeymoon. 

As we walked farther, we passed an equally massive powerboat.  The boat must have been sixty or seventy feet long, and as we were walking past it, we could see, through the small portholes, people lounging inside.  My friend, a sociologist, turned and said, “Let’s knock on the window and see if we can talk with them.”

I stopped in my tracks.  As we’d passed the boat a few seconds before, I’d noticed that it was registered in the Cayman Islands.  “No way,” I said to my friend.  “A boat this size from the Cayman Islands could mean drugs.” 

My friend made the logical observation that I didn’t know that to be a fact.  But I insisted and managed, after a few minutes, to persuade my friend to play it safe.  Last week on our phone conversation, I reminded him of our experience in the marina and shared that I’d always thought of him from that moment on as a curious risk-taker. 

Later in the conversation, I told him that his phone call had caught me at a gathering of nuns, oblates, and associates of a monastic order.  I shared that I’d spoken at the gathering eleven years before and had subsequently joined the group.  For most of the past decade, I’d attended the annual gathering and made amazing friends.   My friend was silent for a moment before he said, “No, you’re the risk taker.  No way I’d ever join a group like that.”

It seems that we all have our “jumping off places,” the places where we must decide between taking a risk and playing it safe.  What terrifies one person is happily embraced by another. 

There are those who argue that it never hurts to play it safe, to back away from anything risky.  I don’t think that’s true, and it turns out I’m not alone.  A survey conducted in retirement facilities asked senior citizens to share their chief regret as they looked back over their lives. 

The leading regret might surprise you.  The chief regret was “I wish I’d risked more.”