Last week I shared my opinion about the tremendous education we get from reading and from travel and described part one of our trip through the Southwest. Here is part two:

After staying overnight in Flagstaff, we headed to the Grand Canyon. We only had about a half-day to spend at the canyon so we drove directly to the South Rim and began hiking the rim at Mather’s point, stopping often to drink in the amazing views. Having never been, I expected to walk up to the edge and “see the canyon”. If you have been there I’m sure this sounds amusing. I was amazed at the size, and the irregular shape of the canyon that continues being carved out by wind and the swift moving Colorado River. I was struck by the stark beauty, amazing colors and rock formations. We want to go back for more and it is truly grand.

We rolled into Las Vegas at a cool 103 degrees. No problem, because as you have probably heard, “it’s a dry heat.” Our kids know their dad, so in anticipation of this trip two of them bought me a walking food tour along the Vegas strip. The guide spiced up the tour with interesting tips about dining in Las Vegas including background stories about several of the restaurateurs that were a part of our tour.

As everyone knows, Las Vegas is a city of glitz and glamour with amazing hotel complexes containing architectural marvels. It is also home to a vast array of entertainment, so we felt compelled to take in a show. We decided to attend a show that combined magic and comedy and it was quite good. The illusionist did some amazing slight of hand tricks and kept the crowd laughing as he performed. He used members of the audience as the butt of his jokes during most of his illusions, including yours truly.

One of the things we really wanted to do while in the vicinity of Vegas was tour Hoover Dam. I had heard stories about how large it is, and similar to the Grand Canyon, the sheer size of the Dam was hard to grasp, especially knowing it was built during the early 1930’s. To construct the dam they poured concrete 24 hours a day for 19 months only ceasing work on July 4th and Christmas Day. At the base of the Dam it is over 750 feet thick! If you are ever in the area, go see Hoover Dam and do the Power Generation Tour.

After a good meal at the aptly named Southwest Diner in Boulder City we were ready to make the long drive back to El Paso the following day. We relied a little too heavily on the GPS for navigation and found ourselves taking an even longer route through the Mojave Desert in eastern California. At 9:00 A.M. the thermometer read 109 degrees! Unfortunately we didn’t see any wild burros despite the signs warning us not to harass them as we drove toward Phoenix, AZ. By the time we stopped for a taste of home at the Cracker Barrel in Phoenix it was 114 degrees!

After 14 hours on the road we were back to the best Mexican food I’ve ever tasted in Juarez, MX. During our drive all we saw for hours were tall, stark mountains, cactus and rock piles. I’m glad we did it the way we did, and it was beautiful in its own way, but I was starting to miss the green hills and valleys of home. All we had left on our trip was enjoying our grandsons for a few more days and a visit to the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas. I had never been to one of these facilities and after it got dark, as they say, the stars came out! The universities of Texas and Texas A&M both operate this facility and peering through their huge telescopes was a treat. For example, you could clearly see the rings of Saturn!

We then returned to what I believe is one of the most beautiful places in the world, Southeast Tennessee which also includes the side benefit of being home to another beautiful site, our granddaughters. There truly is no place like home.

For many years I have held a firm opinion that two of the very best forms of education come from reading and travel. The last few years in my work as a school counselor I have shared this opinion with every Middle School student I have had the opportunity to influence, telling them that even if they do not have the chance to travel right now, their mind is free to do so through reading, and our local Middle School library is a treasure just waiting to be mined.

For the past several years our daughter has worked outside the country. This, our love of travel, and the fact that her and our son in law have given us two grandsons are all the incentive Pam and I need, to get out of town every chance we get.

Most recently they have lived in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, so for this trip, Juarez served as our base of operations. Even though Juarez does not have a reputation as a great destination, people there are welcoming and friendly, and the food is amazing, which is reason enough for me to be a frequent visitor.

On this two-week visit we decided to take advantage of our daughter’s current location and see a little of the American Southwest that heretofore we had only read about. So we rented a car and took a whirlwind tour. We headed west from El Paso into New Mexico, passing through Las Cruces, a surprisingly verdant little town in the valley before turning north toward Albuquerque. We found ourselves climbing steadily through a rocky, mountainous, and desert-like country. Once we reached Albuquerque we turned west toward Flagstaff, Arizona. When we left El Paso the only agenda we had was to spend three nights in Las Vegas, Nevada so we were open to taking detours along the way if something looked interesting. Much to our delight we found several interesting places. The first two were in Northern Arizona; The Painted Desert and The Petrified Forest. We had heard of these places but had only a vague idea what they were. When we happened on them, we were pleased to find that a very good way to see them is to take a driving tour of 28 miles with scenic stops all along the way. You can get out of the car and within a few steps be treated to some amazing sights. Our timing was perfect, as it was getting late in the day and the late evening sun really brought out the amazing colors of the Painted Desert. It was amazingly beautiful and aptly named. The same road tour continued through the Petrified Forest, which I now know consists of thousands of large, downed, ancient trees, preserved for our viewing by an apparent cataclysmic volcanic eruption. The trees were coated and preserved by volcanic ash encapsulating and preserving them for us to see thousands (some say millions) of years later.

After this we planned to drive on into Flagstaff, but before we got there we found another surprise, Meteor Crater, Arizona! That’s right, Meteor Crater. When I see an Interstate exit by that name I have to at least see how far off the beaten path it is. What we found, just a few miles off I-40 in Northern Arizona was, you guessed it, a meteor crater, deep enough that if the Washington Monument were sitting on the bottom, the top would be roughly level with the surface and that is 555 feet! The floor of the crater is large enough to contain 20 football fields, and if the walls of the crater were lined with stadium seating, 20 million people could be seated! The perimeter of the crater is over a mile across from rim to rim.

That is all I have space to write about this week, so next week Wally and Pam do Vegas! Don’t get too excited, it is Wally and Pam.

Most of us are really good at looking back at what we often refer to as the “good ole days”. We love to wax nostalgic about how good things were way back when; but today I want us to instead take a look at the road ahead. How far ahead do we want to look? Well, let’s look out into the future to the time when we will no longer be here. What kind of legacy will we leave behind? Legacy usually refers to the material things like houses, land, and financial assets we leave behind in our last will and testament.

In the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams plays Professor Keating, a prep school English Teacher. In one poignant moment in the movie he quotes Whitman to his students, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be”? That, my friends is a good question for all of us to consider, what verse will you contribute to this great play in which all of us have a part to play?

I know there are a few of you who may have accomplished great things or accumulated a great deal of wealth which you plan to pass along to your heirs, and you may think of these things as your legacy. Granted, those things are definitely a part of our legacy. But if you are a parent, I would contend that you will leave something much more valuable behind. I believe the greatest legacy we parents will leave behind is to simply raise our children as good people, good citizens, and good neighbors, people who will make a positive impact on the world we leave behind. I would challenge anyone who has children to debate this point.

If we can in fact agree that this is our greatest potential legacy, then as we take that look ahead we must consider something. Does the life we are living, or to use Professor Keating’s words, does the verse we are contributing, support what we believe is our life’s most important work? Are we spending our resources, including especially our time, in a way that supports our belief that our children are in fact our greatest legacy?

In my life, I have had the privilege to know and sometimes work with people who would be considered extremely successful by outside observers. But in a few sad cases, if you look behind the curtain so to speak, you would see a life littered with broken promises, broken relationships, and broken hearts. I have heard it said that our children are in fact the only things in life that we can “take with us”. So today, as we take that look ahead, I would simply like to suggest that we parents take a little time to think about our legacy.

I enjoy the game of golf. I enjoy playing it, watching it on TV, I enjoy talking about it, and I think about it a lot. As much as I enjoy it, you would think I would play more often than I do. Every year I go into the spring, thinking this will be the year I get into a routine of playing multiple times a week and really improve my game. Well, maybe next year…

But this article is not about golf, it is about our attitude; the mindset we have as we go about our daily lives. I am just using golf as a vehicle to illustrate my thoughts about attitude. For many golfers, a bad first hole or even an errant first shot can cause them to have a negative attitude through the whole round.

Every golfer needs a plan, as do all of us, for how we will handle the challenges of the day. We need to think ahead about how we will deal with the obstacles we are likely to encounter. For a round of golf, thinking ahead about the first few holes and having a conservative, realistic plan for how you will attack each hole can help you avoid allowing a bad beginning to ruin your whole day. Similarly, thinking ahead about your day, and having a plan for how you will pro-actively negotiate your way around and through the obstacles you are likely to see can be a great way to keep your attitude positive.

But, you say, my daily life is a lot more complicated than a round of golf! I agree, and I realize you may encounter life circumstances that threaten to crush your ability to maintain a positive attitude. So what are we to do? The life we find ourselves in is the life we have been given and as they say, we must play the cards we have been dealt. Often in my work as a counselor, I find myself sitting with someone dealing with a lot of hurt and anger, or facing seemingly insurmountable circumstances. In such cases I sometimes talk about a concept known as reframing – learning to see things from a different point of view. It can be a very valuable skill whereby we learn to view serious problems or obstacles as challenges, which we have the skills to face and overcome.

A frequently cited and dramatic example of Reframing can be found in Victor Frankl’s book, From Death Camp to Existentialism, where he speaks of being imprisoned in WWII Nazi Concentration Camps. For three years, he lived through starvation and torture in four camps. He lost his beloved wife and all of his family, and witnessed most of his fellow inmates die. Frankl kept his mind active, planning the lectures he would give after his release, using experiences from the death camps to illustrate points he wanted to teach. As a devoted teacher, his careful, deliberate planning of his future lectures kept his spirit and body alive in hideous dehumanizing conditions. He survived the death camps and went on to realize his vision of using his experiences as a great healer, writer and lecturer.

A positive attitude is always preferable to the alternative, so be encouraged to think about what it would look like to have a plan for facing your daily challenges. If you are already in the midst of a problem, could you reframe it and learn to see it from a different perspective? Could you learn to see it as a challenge you alone are uniquely equipped to face? Could you even learn to see it as an opportunity from which you will learn valuable lessons for the future, benefiting yourself and all those you care about?