The Way of Wanderlust by Don George

I entered Notre-Dame on my most recent trip, I was overwhelmed by the solid, soaring arches and columns I had forgotten, by the depth and texture of the stained-glass windows with their luminous blues and reds and greens. I thought of how many people had worked to build this magnificence, and of how many people since then had stood, perhaps on the very same stones as I, and marveled at it. I thought of all the faith and hope and sacrifice it manifests.
    I walked through the fervent space, awed by the art and the hush that seemed to resonate with the whispers of centuries, and just when I was beginning to feel too small and insignificant and was getting ready to leave, I saw a simple sign over a tiny stone basin of water, on a column near the doors.
    The sign said, “In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit” in seven languages, with pictures that showed a hand dipping into the water, then touching a forehead.
    I touched my hand to the cool, still water, then brought it to my head, and as I did so, chills ran through my body and tears streamed into my eyes.
    Somehow that simple act had forged a palpable contact with ages past, had put everything into startling focus: the ceaseless flow of pilgrims to this special place, the ceaseless procession of hands to water and fingers to forehead, all sharing this basin, this gesture.
    I felt a new sense of the history that flows with us and around us and beyond us all—of the plodding, tireless path of humankind and of the sluggish, often violent spread of Christianity through Europe and the rest of the world—and a new sense of the flow of my own history, too: my Protestant upbringing, a pastor whose notions of Christian love have had a deep and abiding influence on my life, the old and still inconceivable idea of God.
    For a few moments I lost all sense of place and time—then a door opened and a tourist group entered, looking up and around in wonder, and I walked into the world of sunlight and spire again.
    I stopped, blinked at the sandwich stalls and postcard vendors, then turned back toward that stony symmetry and thought: Sometimes you feel so small and insignificant in the crush of history that you lose all sense of purpose and self. Then something will happen to make you realize that every act and every encounter has its own precious meaning and lesson, and that history is simply the sum of all these.
    Sometimes it comes together, as it did for me that moment in Notre-Dame; sometimes the world is reduced to a simple sign, a stone basin, the touch of water to head—and the vast pageant of the past and the living parade of the present take on a new, and renewing, symmetry and sense.

Conquering Half Dome

    In the mid-1990s, I left the Examiner and joined Salon, a feisty, bright, and ambitious web magazine that had been started by friends and colleagues from the Examiner . The founders’ goal was to produce a site distinguished by intelligent commentary, excellent writing, and groundbreaking journalism, and within that context, they asked me to create the travel section of my dreams. I christened the section Wanderlust, and we launched in 1997, with the passionate mandate of publishing unvarnished dispatches and soul-stretching narratives. “Conquering Half Dome,” published in 1999, was my own attempt to write a soul-stretching narrative about an adventure not far from my Northern California backyard, in Yosemite National Park, but threaded with far-ranging themes of frailty, family, and overcoming our fears. When I read this now, I can’t help but compare the narrator of this piece with the heedless young man who ascended Kilimanjaro on a whim. . . . And I think: Our mountains also evolve over time.

    SOMETIMES WE KNOW A JOURNEY WILL BE a grand adventure—the three-week expedition I made along Pakistan’s avalanche-laden Karakoram Highway to enchanted Hunza comes to mind. Other times we know it will be a little