66 AFAR SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
JOE^ SCHERSCHEL/
THE^ LIFEPI
CTURE^ COLLECTIONVI
A^ GET
TY
IMAGESconnect essay
entailed Corinne languishing on a sun lounger
with a cocktail in hand, while I throttled back
and forth in the pool, looking up only when the
photographer yelled, “Smile, Jackie!”
We set ourselves a limit of only two years
in the air before we’d figure out what we really
wanted to do in life. In the meantime, we made
the most of our benefits, traveling throughout
Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and
Europe, as well as venturing to other parts of
Britain, becoming travelers in our own country.
Inevitably, we transitioned to our chosen
careers, immersing ourselves in work that left
little opportunity to travel. In time, I would
move more than 5,000 miles away to live in
California, and Corinne and her husband would
raise two daughters in Yorkshire, England.
Yet at some point we resumed traveling
together, slipping into our old pattern with
ease, planning trips without any dithering or
dissent. Corinne is better at finding hotels
we like, and I’m good with flights—15 minutes
after we decided on four days in Marrakech,
everything was booked. And that’s when we
dusted off a pact we’d made in our early 20s—in
an insouciant moment, we’d promised that,
when we reached the grand old age of 60, we
would commit to a travel adventure every year
until we could no longer drag ourselves aboard
an aircraft, train, ship, or bus. Time whipped
around, and in 2015, soon after we entered our
60s, we traveled to Costa Rica, followed by
Alaska the next year, and then Kenya, a place
we’d dreamed of visiting for years.
As the small aircraft circled a rough land-
ing strip on Kenya’s Maasai Mara, I nudged
Corinne to look out the window. A boy on a
motorbike was racing around the grassy area,
driving away grazing antelope so we could
land. We were on our way to Mahali Mzuri, the
tent retreat founded by Sir Richard Branson.
Every day seemed to thrill us more than the
day before, as Betty—one of only a handful of
female guides working on the Mara—took us
out on safari. Over
dinner each evening,
with the calling of
wild animals in the
distance, we slipped
into reminiscing.
Perhaps it was
being in Africa that made us reflect upon
those early days of clambering aboard planes,
ready to go wherever a free ticket might take
us. We talked about what we had hoped for
when we embarked on our travels years ago.
We had a desire to learn more about the world
and its people, to experience wildly different
places that would force us to grow as we gained
knowledge of cultures beyond our own. Along
the way, we learned to be worthy travel com-
panions—and to respect each other’s needs and
preferences. I’ve long since forgiven Corinne
for using the hair dryer several times each day,
and I know she tolerates my need to sit as closeto the front of an aircraft as possible.
On the day we left the Mara, we watched
the boy on his bike shooing away antelope so
our aircraft could whisk us away from a land
we didn’t want to leave. But we knew that we
would be traveling again soon, honoring an
intention forged all those years ago: to render
life as big as we could possibly make it.Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the
best-selling Maisie Dobbs series. The 15th and
latest book in the series, The American Agent
(HarperCollins), was released in March 2019.
This is her first story for AFAR.The late photojournal-
ist Joe Scherschel cap-
tured these images of
Eastern Airlines flight
attendants while on
assignment in Puerto
Rico in 1958.