It’s wonderful to think, but it’s even more wonderful to experience life with all your senses.” ~ Oscar Wilde

.
How right he is!

I’m back in the office now. The life of the mind uses a lot of my time when I’m not traveling. It’s incredibly interesting! Whether I’m researching possibilities for new trips, or working on long-range strategy plans, or writing a blog post, or learning new coding techniques for our computer system (yes, I still have some techie left in me!), it’s all quite fascinating. Like the man said, it’s wonderful to think!

But there’s so much more, isn’t there? There’s the part we don’t get in the office, sitting in front of a computer. There’s the part we (or at least most of us in this culture) tend to forget about in the stresses of jobs, family, and all the commitments we have. That’s where travel, vacations, and adventures come in. When you get away from the everyday, all of a sudden, you experience life with so many more senses!

A couple of weeks ago, I was up in Cottonwood, and took these pictures of trees in the winter. I was struck by their beauty, and this quotation fit them so well.

While I was out walking there, I was feeling the chill in the air, hearing the river running nearby, gazing astonished at these incredible trees and the blue, blue sky, and feeling the path and the leaves underfoot. I was using all these senses in a way that doesn’t happen here in the office.

Now that I’m back, looking at the pictures can bring back some of the sensations — the exhilaration of those deep, fresh breaths, or the the nip in the air that made me glad I had a hat. But the pictures couldn’t do that unless I was actually there in the first place.

Oscar Wilde was so right.

We stop in the small town of Cottonwood on our Sedona hiking tours for women. You might even see these exact same trees, but you’d never recognize them covered with green leaves.