As any travel lover knows, there is always time on a journey when you have quiet moments to contemplate. It might be at 3 am on a trans-Atlantic flight, perhaps when watching the miles fly by on a train trip, or while traversing the country on an interstate highway. Even if you’re sitting next to someone, a cozy kind of solitude envelops you, and you feel like you’ve been given a gift –  the time to ponder the universe. Now, I’m the kind of person who rushes through their day: constantly ticking off a “To-Do” list, a dyed-in-the-wool “Busyaholic.” But travel presents me with special – and treasured – moments of quiet contemplation.

A most-memorable solitary interlude happened to me during a recent trip through South Africa’s Kruger Park. This season, the Park has been blessed with an unusual amount of rain. While this has made the animals a bit more challenging to find (as they’re not all sharing hard-to-find watering holes), it offered me a new view of Kruger. My prior impressions of Kruger had been of low, scrubby bush – a color scheme of mostly tans and dark browns with just touches of green. But this time: lush, green, trees exploding with leaves, high grasses of many varieties all around. While I “soaked” it all in, this thought popped into my head: even in the driest of seasons, the seeds of change are just below the surface…waiting for the rain to bring them forth and let them blossom –  ready to change everything.

I’ll always remember this moment. I hope I have the right opportunity to share it with my children, when the world hands them a challenge they feel unequal to handling. It gave me comfort. It gave me hope. It underscored for me why travel is so important. It offers you the chance to journey away from the everyday life, to open yourself to new people and new perspectives. Travel affirms that life is ever-evolving.