ABOVE PHOTOS: BOTSWANA 2014

FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. A powerful emotion from the first time your baby-friend gets to leave the playpen without you… to being left off the weekly bus from the nursing home to the mall. When my granddaughter told me there was a label coined specifically for this awful feeling I was much relieved.

However it turns out that the meaning of FOMO changes over the years. In fact if anything it is more powerful. The fear migrates from missing that big gathering or event or cool place to the possibility of missing out on some of life’s important adventures because you get too old or weak or fearful.

 So. Therefore. My main New Year’s Resolution is this: I will become sparer, leaner, stronger, braver in 2016 so I may continue to have adventures that go a step or two beyond viewing life from my usual window seat or cafe table.

This resolution is based on the same old goals we all set for ourselves every year about weight, exercise and the like—the difference for me is that sparer-leaner-stronger-braver has been happening, little by little, over the last two or three years—and it feels like the biggest accomplishment of my life—me who only ever wanted to read the next book and drink the next coffee—me who now wants to brave (just a few of) the elements.

I guess it started out on safari in Kenya, grew on a glacier in Iceland, was enhanced in Botswana, dangled possibilities in Mongolia and will continue in Greenland next summer. No shooting the rapids or climbing the big mountain…just trekking a ways and a sleeping bag here and there. Maybe the odd baby hippo in the camp or the occasional meal of ‘seal oil and blubber’ or even, in some not-too-distant future, a gentle ramble somewhere along the Silk Route or to a cabin on a Norwegian mountainside.

It’s so odd to want to test myself physically after 70-odd years without the vaguest such desire. I blame it on Presbyterian Healthplex, my gym-mates and the fear of missing out on that last walk.

A GENTLE-ADVENTURE PORTFOLIO

KENYA

ICELAND 

BOTSWANA

MONGOLIA