North America- Wild Yellowstone: Saving All The Parts

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OFFICIAL BLOG OF HABIBI WORLD TRAVEL & TOUR

Re-Fresh With Nature Adventure Travel

By By Wendy Redal

Wendy is passionate about travel, nature, and communication. She blogs for Good Nature Travel, and her work also appears in the Huffington Post.
Yellowstone

As fall settles over Southcentral Alaska in a brief burst of gold, birches gleam against the dark spruce that cover the lower slopes of the Kenai Mountains. It’s a fleeting season, and I was fortunate to be rafting 17 miles of the Kenai River when the colors were at their peak.

Flaming trees lined the banks, with ice-edged peaks rising in the distance. Fishermen stood hip-deep in waders, casting for silver salmon and rainbow trout in the glacier-fed water that tumbled in a turquoise rush toward Skilak Lake. A bald eagle, scouting for fish, flew across the river at eye level in front of our raft. High above, a few Dall sheep were visible as white specks on a talus slope.

As I drifted downriver, drinking in the scent of the fresh water and decaying foliage, I was aware of just how relaxed I felt — something I really only sensed in the context of contrast. For a blissful, long day my phone was worthless to me here where I couldn’t be reached. I had left it behind at the lodge, avoiding email and removing myself, a confirmed news junkie, from the daily media barrage.

I recalled the words of John Muir, who wrote, “Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”

That was exactly how I felt: my cares were one by one being released into the river, floating behind me as we continued our journey westward through the enormous Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

Jackson Lake

RE-FRESHMENT
When our day on the river came to a close, my spirit felt refreshed: “re-freshed,” in the sense of attaining new vitality and energy, starting from an invigorated place. My outlook had brightened; I felt happy. I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed this infusion of nature and quiet and beauty, even though the same thing happens every time I choose to travel with this focus.

My only regret was that I was not on a multi-day river journey or backcountry sojourn where the taste of peace I’d gotten could be magnified tenfold over a week or more in the wilderness. That kind of escape would offer a truly transformative experience.

Fittingly, the notion of travel as transformation was a theme of the conference I was in Alaska to attend. More than 800 delegates met in Anchorage in September for the Adventure Travel World Summit, the annual global gathering of the Adventure Travel Trade Association. My raft trip on the Kenai was one of a slate of pre-summit adventures offered by Alaska tour operators to showcase their environs.

Back inside the convention center in downtown Anchorage a few days later, I attended a panel on “The Transforming Power of Adventure Travel.” One element of the session addressed the growing desire of many travelers to find respite from the relentlessly fast pace of our hyper-connected daily lives.

Studies show U.S. adults average 12 hours a day using our smartphones, tablets, personal computers, video games, radios, DVDs, DVRs and TVs. Out of 168 hours in a week, we spend more than 50 with our devices—more time than most of us spend sleeping or working.

When this is the norm in our daily lives, it’s bound to affect the way we travel. Too often, we’re tempted to record every instant, to “compose” moments we can shoot and share on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat — and we ultimately end up with a filtered, mediated collection of events rather than a genuine encounter with what we’ve come to see and do, which is the heart of mindful travel.

While the iPhone isn’t even a decade old, it has so profoundly changed the nature of the social and cultural landscape that it takes a deliberate effort to go “back in time,” as it were, for a recalibrating travel experience.

DISCONNECT TO RECONNECT
But benefits can be found not only in leaving the chaos behind, but in what we find once we do so: travelers are learning that disconnecting from the din allows us to reconnect with who we are inside, to reflect and make discoveries about ourselves and others — and to go home with a greater sense of meaning.

Traveling wholly in the moment allows us to cultivate an openness to what lies before us, and to immerse ourselves in what is immediately at hand. The panelists noted that challenge and uncertainty are often a part of the mix. When travelers have a chance to push their comfort zones – whether physically or culturally – they come away with shifted perspectives and a sense of reward. One speaker quoted Pico Iyer: “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; we travel, next, to find ourselves.”

Lake McDonald

Essential to that quest is getting away from our communication devices, the imperative to be “always on.” When the typical American spends most of their waking hours in front of a screen, just being alone with one’s thoughts can be a challenge.

I’m certain that had I spent my entire time floating down the Kenai River taking photos and uploading them to social media to chronicle my trip, I would have missed the sound of the eagle’s wings as they beat past the bow of our raft. I might not have noticed the way the top few inches of the water was clear, before becoming milky-aqua with suspended glacial silt. I wouldn’t have seen the fly fisherman’s line snaking through the air in a steady rhythm.

By disconnecting from the host of distractions available at the touch of a miniature keyboard, we are able to be present for what waits to surprise and delight us — two of the most powerful reasons to travel.

Yellowstone National Park

Re-fresh Yourself, Las Almas Tour and Travel & patners Is it time to try a digital detox for your next nature adventure trip? Do you want to get your family out and unplugged for your next vacation? Are you ready for a hiking trip in the Rocky Mountains, or maybe an active retreat marked by peace and quiet in Southwest canyon country? There’s no better time to unplug than right after the holidays, and no better place to do it than off the beaten path. You can explore some of the planet’s most beautiful and pristine landscapes on Las Almas Tour & Travel fully guided Small Group Adventures or personally tailored Private Custom Journeys.

Some of our terrific journey options for unplugging and reconnecting to nature include Hiking in Yellowstone, Ranch Time and Rivers, Gorgeous Glacier, Grand Staircase-Escalante Discovery, Hiking Utah’s Parklands, Big Secret Big Bend, Alaska’s National Parks Grand Slam, Las Almas Tour & Travel Botswana, and Costa Rica’s True Nature. But those are just the proverbial tip of the melting iceberg. Don’t wait. Unplug soon. Let us show you the way.

Posted on January 1, 2020 | Travel Notes, Wildlife and Nature