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The Ultimate Journey: Inspiring Stories of Living and Dying
Travel can take many forms with a vast array of destinations, but there's one trip everyone will eventually take. The Ultimate Journey offers a choice selection of true stories from major writers about the final adventure. Crossing all geographical and spiritual boundaries, these writers in the fields of travel and spirituality tell touching, and often surprising, stories of their brushes with death. In a different way, each writer learns an important lesson about life. One traveler tries to make sense of a mysterious rescue from certain death on a bridge in Afghanistan. Another watches a holy man in India bring a crushed fly back to life. A third encounters an old woman in a cemetery in Mexico who tells her more about herself than anyone could know. Contributors include Sogyal Rinpoche, Edward Abbey, Pico Iyer, Mary Morris, Barbara Kingsolver, among others.
352 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2000
12 people want to read
About the author
James O'Reilly
66 books6 followersJames O'Reilly has been a traveler since infancy, and a storyteller almost as long. Born in Oxford, England, in 1953, he savors the early memory of walking as a five-year-old boy across the tarmac at Shannon Airport in Ireland and gazing up at the huge triple tails of the now-defunct Constellation aircraft. The smell of fuel and Irish fog and the amazing sight above him must have made a deep impression because he's been traveling willy-nilly ever since. After emigrating from Ireland to the United States, he grew up in San Francisco, where he was schooled by Jesuits, nuns and assorted yogis and eccentrics in the '60s. His eclectic education was formed as much by growing up in a large Roman Catholic family where he was the second of seven children as it was by being an omnivorous reader who was studying Eastern religion and meditation by his early teens. He traveled a great deal with his family - to Ireland, England, Scotland, and Canada - before heading off to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where, among other things, he spent a semester in Salamanca, Spain.
At Dartmouth, James met his good friend Larry Habegger, with whom he has collaborated since 1982 on projects ranging from radio shows to mystery serials, newspaper and magazine columns to world adventure travel. Since 1985, O'Reilly and Habegger have co-authored the nationally-syndicated travel column "World Travel Watch." In 1993, they co-founded the publishing company Travelers' Tales with James's brother Tim, and have since worked on more than 100 books together, winning many awards for excellence, including the prestigious Lowell Thomas award for outstanding travel book. James has been an active member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) since 1990, and is a former board member of the Tibet Information Network.
James has visited over forty countries and lived in four. Among his favorite travel memories are visiting headhunters in Borneo, rafting the legendary Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, enjoying a meal cooked by blowtorch in Tibet, and hanging out laundry with nuns in Florence. He has made traveling with his own family a priority, and together he and his wife and three daughters have roamed all over Europe. He lives in Palo Alto, California, where he is usually conspiring to be somewhere else.
At Dartmouth, James met his good friend Larry Habegger, with whom he has collaborated since 1982 on projects ranging from radio shows to mystery serials, newspaper and magazine columns to world adventure travel. Since 1985, O'Reilly and Habegger have co-authored the nationally-syndicated travel column "World Travel Watch." In 1993, they co-founded the publishing company Travelers' Tales with James's brother Tim, and have since worked on more than 100 books together, winning many awards for excellence, including the prestigious Lowell Thomas award for outstanding travel book. James has been an active member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) since 1990, and is a former board member of the Tibet Information Network.
James has visited over forty countries and lived in four. Among his favorite travel memories are visiting headhunters in Borneo, rafting the legendary Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, enjoying a meal cooked by blowtorch in Tibet, and hanging out laundry with nuns in Florence. He has made traveling with his own family a priority, and together he and his wife and three daughters have roamed all over Europe. He lives in Palo Alto, California, where he is usually conspiring to be somewhere else.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 20, 2023
I had found this book in a used bookstore a long time ago, and just took it up the other day from my shelf. I had thought it was about traveling. Wrong. It is about journeys, but ones in which the authors found a bit of themselves at odds. These are essays that have been compiled by the author. Some were very metaphysical and long. Enough were compelling to get me to the end of the book.
The one by Barbara Kingsolver (In the Belly of the Beast) was about a place outside of Tucson Arizona where you could visit a decommissioned missile site. I actually looked it up and would visit if in the area. Her writing asked a lot of questions of whys...
"What they left out of the Titan Missile Museum was in plain sight in Hiroshima. Not a sound track with a politically balanced point of view. Just the rest of the facts, those that lie beyond suspension systems and fuel capacity. A missile museum, it seems to me, ought to be horrifying. It had better shake us, if only for a day, out of the illusion of predictability and control that cradles the whole of our quotidian lives. Most of us--nearly all, I would say--live by this illusion. We walk through our days with our minds on schedule--work, kids, getting the roof patched before the rainy season. We do not live as though literally everything we have, including a history and a future, could be erased by two keys turning simultaneously in a lock."
Another one that got to me was by Sister Helen P. Mrosia, called Lists. She tells about her time teaching her first Third-Grade class in Morris, Minnesota. There was one boy who was always disruptive and she was always challenged with confronting his behavior. One day, she had had enough and gave them an in-class writing assignment. They were to list all their classmates and give one thing about them that they admired. She collected these after class. Over the weekend, she wrote down the name of each student on a piece of paper and collated what their classmates had written about them. On Monday, each student received their specific list, and no one had ever mentioned these papers again. She never knew if students had talked about their lists with their parents.
She heard later that the disruptive student had died serving in Vietnam and she went to the funeral.
"It was difficult enough at the graveside. The pastor said the usual prayers, and the bugler played taps. One by one those who loved Mark took a last walk by the coffin and sprinkled it with holy water.
I was the last one to bless the coffin. As I stood there, one of the soldiers who had acted as pallbearer came up to me. 'Were you Mark's math teacher?' he asked. I nodded as I continued to stare at the coffin.
'Mark talked about you a lot,' he said.
After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates headed to Chuck's farmhouse for lunch. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting for me. 'We want to show you something,' his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. 'They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.'
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times.
I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him. 'Thank you so much for doing that,' Mark's mother said. 'As you can see, Mark treasured it.'
Mark's classmates started to gather around us. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, 'I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home.' Chuck's wife said, 'Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album.' 'I have mine too,' Marilyn said. 'It's in my diary.' Then Vicky, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. 'I carry this with me at all times.' Vicki said without batting an eyelash, 'I think we all saved our lists.'
That's when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again."
---That story really got to me.
The one by Barbara Kingsolver (In the Belly of the Beast) was about a place outside of Tucson Arizona where you could visit a decommissioned missile site. I actually looked it up and would visit if in the area. Her writing asked a lot of questions of whys...
"What they left out of the Titan Missile Museum was in plain sight in Hiroshima. Not a sound track with a politically balanced point of view. Just the rest of the facts, those that lie beyond suspension systems and fuel capacity. A missile museum, it seems to me, ought to be horrifying. It had better shake us, if only for a day, out of the illusion of predictability and control that cradles the whole of our quotidian lives. Most of us--nearly all, I would say--live by this illusion. We walk through our days with our minds on schedule--work, kids, getting the roof patched before the rainy season. We do not live as though literally everything we have, including a history and a future, could be erased by two keys turning simultaneously in a lock."
Another one that got to me was by Sister Helen P. Mrosia, called Lists. She tells about her time teaching her first Third-Grade class in Morris, Minnesota. There was one boy who was always disruptive and she was always challenged with confronting his behavior. One day, she had had enough and gave them an in-class writing assignment. They were to list all their classmates and give one thing about them that they admired. She collected these after class. Over the weekend, she wrote down the name of each student on a piece of paper and collated what their classmates had written about them. On Monday, each student received their specific list, and no one had ever mentioned these papers again. She never knew if students had talked about their lists with their parents.
She heard later that the disruptive student had died serving in Vietnam and she went to the funeral.
"It was difficult enough at the graveside. The pastor said the usual prayers, and the bugler played taps. One by one those who loved Mark took a last walk by the coffin and sprinkled it with holy water.
I was the last one to bless the coffin. As I stood there, one of the soldiers who had acted as pallbearer came up to me. 'Were you Mark's math teacher?' he asked. I nodded as I continued to stare at the coffin.
'Mark talked about you a lot,' he said.
After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates headed to Chuck's farmhouse for lunch. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting for me. 'We want to show you something,' his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. 'They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.'
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times.
I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him. 'Thank you so much for doing that,' Mark's mother said. 'As you can see, Mark treasured it.'
Mark's classmates started to gather around us. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, 'I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home.' Chuck's wife said, 'Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album.' 'I have mine too,' Marilyn said. 'It's in my diary.' Then Vicky, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. 'I carry this with me at all times.' Vicki said without batting an eyelash, 'I think we all saved our lists.'
That's when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again."
---That story really got to me.
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