I always try to guess where I’ll be ringing in the New Year in the next year on New Year’s Eve. I like to reflect on where I thought I actually would be celebrating and think back on all the events of that year that have placed me in an entirely different space.
Last year, I guessed I would end up at some dive bar in the city, but I found myself 282 feet below sea level with a friend, staring up at the surrounding mountain range that towers over 14,000 feet. I got the chance to stand at the lowest place in North America and look up at the tallest mountain in the continental U.S.
I stood in the center of a winter wonderland decorated with salt and climbed painted hills that overlooked the rebirth of Badwater Basin’s lake. I got to be amazed by some of the most dramatic and contrasting features in nature, and none of it was in my New Year’s forecast.
This New Year, I learned that things don’t always go the way they are planned, but what you get out of the experience could be something extraordinary. The desert may not be what I had planned for, but the year seems to have started out in such an amazing way.