2023 Happy Last Year: An Attitude of Gratitude
An Attitude of Gratitude
After the interrupted calendars of the pandemic years, 2023 reopened the map. Sarah, Skyelark and I moved from the Western Cape to Las Vegas, Portugal, Fair Isle, Spain and Gibraltar—not to make up for lost time, but to discover that time had changed what travel meant.
The world did not return to normal. It returned to motion.
2023 was the first full year of uninterrupted post-pandemic travel. The routes reopened, but the traveler who stepped back onto them had learned not to confuse movement with freedom.
From Africa to North America, Europe and the United Kingdom, the year covered distance. More importantly, it recovered scale: summer against winter, desert against island, casino noise against North Atlantic silence, and the companionship of Sarah and Skyelark against every changing backdrop.
The year began in summer while England waited in winter.
The Western Cape opened the year with a clean reversal. January meant heat, open beach and Southern Hemisphere light. The cold English winter existed somewhere else. For a moment, the calendar itself felt negotiable.
The rocks along the coast looked like wrinkles in time. The beaches carried the scale that cities often conceal. South Africa was not merely the first destination. It was the proof that the world had become available again.
The year began where January meant sunlight, surf and the southern edge of Africa.
The globe-trotting wonderhound made every border more human.
Skyelark had already crossed by land, sea and air from Charleston to Britain. By 2023, she was not simply coming along. She was part of the navigation system.
Portugal, Fair Isle, Marbella and Gibraltar all changed when measured at terrier height. A runway became a dog walk. A hotel became a test of hospitality. A coastline became an inventory of smells, wind and possible pursuit. Travel became family movement rather than personal escape.
From Charleston to Fair Isle, adaptability became a four-legged form of courage.
The year closes with the next world already visible through glass.
Las Vegas returned uncertainty to the body.
April and June brought poker back into the foreground: a World Poker Tour event, a World Series of Poker win, and the reminder that luck becomes useful only after judgment has survived contact with incomplete information.
Nevada expanded the table. Seal at the Venetian, Red Rock Canyon, Hoover Dam and the WSOP were not separate adventures. They were variations on commitment—music, geology, engineering and probability, all demanding that attention be placed somewhere real.
Hoover Dam made probability look small beside what pencils, slide rules and commitment could build.
Think like a physicist. Commit like a player. Never fool yourself.
The result mattered. The deeper reward was evidence that the long game remained alive.
Desert, dam, stage and felt turned risk into a complete landscape.
The most remote island restored the value of stillness.
The Fair Isle return took six months to execute. That delay became part of the lesson. The distance between vision and execution had widened during the pandemic, but the route still existed for anyone willing to keep moving toward it.
Fair Isle was the opposite of Las Vegas without becoming its enemy. One amplified signal. The other removed noise. Sheep Rock, Atlantic weather, photography, flights from Tingwall and the island's tiny permanent population rebuilt an older truth: busy is a decision.
Skyelark, weather, grass and North Atlantic water. The island made presence measurable.
The year ended where continents, languages and future plans meet.
By September, Gibraltar had entered the story. The Rock was not just another destination. It became a hinge between Britain and Spain, work and travel, old routines and a new Mediterranean life.
Marbella added the Hard Rock Hotel, poker and dog-friendly hospitality. Lagos and Portimão extended the coast west into Portugal. Gibraltar's runway, narrow streets and local dog adventures turned infrastructure into daily life. The year stopped looking like a sequence of trips and began looking like relocation rehearsals.
Hard Rock Marbella: a festive marker inside a year that kept moving south.
The terrier at the window, studying the traffic between one life and the next.
The year scaled back the writing and expanded the evidence.
2023 recorded a deliberate media shift. Fewer words carried the burden. Video and photography took more of the watch. Fair Isle flights, Nevada nights, South African coastlines and Mediterranean arrivals were captured as visual proof rather than converted immediately into essays.
This was not the abandonment of writing. It was a recalibration. Some landscapes need interpretation. Others need the writer to stop standing in front of them.
The year in motion.
Africa, America, Europe, the United Kingdom and the spaces between destinations.
Photography did not replace memory. It kept memory from becoming too obedient to the story told later.
The year left a navigable wake.
The monthly archive shows the real rhythm: reflection and poker in winter, Portugal in spring, Nevada in summer, Fair Isle at the height of the year, then Gibraltar and the Iberian coast carrying the final quarter.
The map reopened. Gratitude became the bearing.
2023 did not erase the pandemic years. It revealed what they had taught. Freedom was not the number of flights, hotel rooms or countries crossed. It was the ability to move with the people and creature who made movement meaningful.
From the rugged quiet of Fair Isle to the amplified energy of Las Vegas, from Western Cape summer to Mediterranean winter, the year supplied contrast. Gratitude supplied coherence.
2023 In Review · An Attitude of Gratitude · Sarah, Ed and Skyelark