Friendship Built on Miles

Recent news about the health of my and Chrissi’s beloved sister-friend has lent us a fresh Perspective and reminded us how much we cherish that relationship. Aside from her absolute amazingness that instantly endears anyone who meets Erin to her, one of many factors that has built our special bond of friendship is the journeys we’ve taken together through the years.  

Erin, Chrissi & Jenni in Disneyland, circa 1999

I believe that travel intensifies relationships. It creates a special bond through shared experiences, memories, discoveries,  and interdependence that leads to an understanding of one another that might not otherwise exist.

That sounds lovely, but haven’t we all experienced the negative ways travel can affect friendships, too? Your companion’s cute quirky habit can begin to drive you insane after days on the road together. But even inworking through our conflicts, new appreciation and a closer bond can come. Nonetheless, some personality combinations work better than others for travelling together. (And Erin + Me + Sis is a great combination!)

Some of my favorite travel memories thus far with Erin include:

• Summer trips to Kah-Nee-Tah Resort in the mid-90′s. We three girls felt so independent, packing our bags and cruising across the dessert in the old Volvo. Then we would stuff ourselves with Indian Fry Bread and float around in the hot spring pool, go “dork diving”, and race up and down the corridor on luggage carts before falling asleep on the floor of Erin’s parents’ spare room.
• Visiting Chrissi at college in spring of ’99.  While Erin and I were still in high school, we escaped one spring break from small-town Oregon to visit Chrissi in Southern California. Cool college boys, a Pedro the Lion concert, a day at the Happiest Place on Earth, an orange grove picnic, and San Diego’s Mission Beach. Our world was enlarged and we were thoroughly ready to graduate high school after this fun trip!
  

  Erin & Jenni in the City of Lights

• Three weeks in France with our French class later that year took our friendship to a new altitude. We laughed, ate, played, and “Frenglished” our way through that gorgeous country and brought home stories to relive together indefinitely. (I wrote about the trip here French Love Affair.)
  

  The Other Two in the Oregon Cascades last summer

• Countless mini-adventures camping, hiking, swimming, canoeing, running, snowshoeing  through nature’s playground in the Bend area the past 15 years.  Enjoying together the rugged beauty of creation braids a friendship together, whether diving into a cold mountain lake and yelping for the cold, or summitting Tumalo Mountain at midnight and singing in the New Year with the stars glittering above us and the city lights shimmering far below us.

Even one of our most recent attempts at adventure with the Other Two taught me how to Find Joy in Misadventures. And maybe that’s where the “life is a journey” metaphor ceases to be theory.

Just as our road trips and airplane travels braided our three-strand friendship together, they also prepared us to walk together through the joys and challenges life has and will continue to bring our way. We’ve already covered a lot of miles together already…and we’re ready for more!