The flight home was both exhausting and tedious.  The longest leg was a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco.  Eventually, my thoughts turned to this: Who on this plane, however, could be involved in a trip, an adventure, more personal, moving, or important than my own?

    I sat on the aisle, and in the center seat next to me was a lean, dark haired, middle aged man.  For hours, the only word I heard him say was "beer."  Although airline coach seating puts your rowmate inside anyone's penumbra of comfortable personal space,  he and I observed the convention of politely ignoring each other.  I read Moberg.  He was reading a popular novel, in German.

    Just inside American airspace, the flight crew began to pass out U.S. customs declaration forms.  For non U.S. citizens, this requires entering a passport number.  My neighbor produced an oxblood colored passport -  Croatia.  I felt some national guilt, for America had stood by far too long, tolerating slaughter in his homeland and that entire region.  I felt the urge to be friendly.

    "Is this your first trip to the states?"

    "No.  My third."

    "Is it business or pleasure?"

    And then this unobtrusive man explained:  he was a television producer and director.  His specialty was documentaries of people engaged in high risk sports.  He had been commissioned by the Slovenian government to produce a documentary of a solo climber who was going to scale the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite Park.  He had some hope that this climber would allow him to climb alongside (not attached) during part of the ascent.  He was himself a climber.

    How much more this quiet man was, than merely a passenger on Lufthansa.

    "Have you seen the Imax film about Everest?"  I asked.

    Again, he would surprise me.  "Yes, but not in an Imax theater.  I saw it in a studio.  I was on that climb.  I knew the two men who died fairly well.  We had made several climbs together."  My quiet neighbor has been to the summit of Everest twice.  He has been to the summit of K2.  He has climbed all over the world.

    On the last leg of my return, from San Francisco to Spokane (Washington State), I sat in front of a blonde giant of a young woman, who engaged her rowmates in animated conversation during much of the trip.  They were from northern California, so their travel today was to be a single two hour flight.  The young blonde woman had begun her day in Hartford, Connecticut, at 7:30am (EDT).  She wore this fact like a badge:  I've come from the other side of the continent, I've traveled all day, I'm significant.

    I yawned and considered my own travel day, which had begun over 24 hours ago in Stockholm.  This time I was in a middle seat.  To my left, at the window, an exhausted executive from Keytronics was returning to Spokane from China, where he had been inspecting some of their overseas production facilities.  Across the aisle in my same row a man who I had spoken with in the airport was dozing.  He was returning to Spokane from Peru, by way of Miami.

    What, then, of the voyager returned from Sweden, who has three times heard Du Maste Finnas sung live, and been so touched by ABBA and the music (all over again)?   Can or must this be judged in comparison to stories of the weary warriors returning from China and Peru, or arriving from strife torn Croatia?  Sobering thoughts, threatening to engulf and minimize experiences which, in truth, have rocked me and marked me.  To which, I now see, the answer has been in front of me, more or less, for some time: