Planning for the Unplanned

Several summers ago my wife and I chose the Canadian province of Newfoundland — more accurately the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which was still a part of Great Britain until 1949 — as the place for our almost annual summer season journey to a cold weather destination. And that particular summer — 2015 — winter was very grudgingly giving up its grip on this most easterly of Canadian provinces. Everything about summer was slow in coming, and the thousand-year-in-the-making icebergs, which had drifted down the Labrador Sea from Greenland, were several weeks later than usual to disappear off Newfoundland’s coast.

It was a trip that once again reminded me of the limits of planning.

Understand, I’m an ardent advocate of planning. My mother was fond of saying, “Happiness is having a plan,” and I tend to believe that. I often followed a bad day at the office with a good night of planning vacations. I’ve spent countless hours conjuring our travel routes and studying destinations, and I’ve been rewarded by learning not only the basics of a nation’s transportation, currency and accommodations, but also something of the country’s culture and the political, geographical, religious and artistic influences that have shaped it or now challenge it.

But once again, in Newfoundland, all my planning for a vacation did not produce its best moments and memories. Our favorite overnight accommodation was not one I had researched and booked in advance, but one I had not heard of before we arrived in Newfoundland. The best meal was an off-the-tourist-grid surprise.

The best iceberg adventure was not the commercial tour we booked, but the discoveries we made on our own after taking a wrong turn, getting lost and arriving at a deserted ocean inlet just moments before a magnificent fluorescent-blue iceberg “calved,” that is, broke apart with the sound of a gunshot preceding the spectacular  fall of huge chunks into the sea. We were first stunned and then turned giddy over what we had just experienced…..free of charge, with no other witnesses, and totally unplanned.

Planning is a necessary part of life and essential for the success of almost any worthwhile enterprise. But so is staying open to hunches, going with one’s gut and learning from mistakes. This often makes for the most memorable vacations as well as for the most meaningful vocations.

JER