With the exception of traveling home to Ohio for weddings and funerals, I haven’t taken a single trip that wasn’t centered on outdoor adventure since February of 2009. That trip to Milan was my ex-husband’s idea (to pursue an international modeling career), and if I was being brutally honest, his preference for such is part of the reason his title now contains the word “ex.”
But I digress . . .
Between Milan and last weekend, I’d taken 16 trips ranging from kite boarding in Aruba to trekking the Gishwati forest in Rwanda to cycling the Eastern Arabian Desert in Egypt. So when the Telluride Film Festival came up last weekend, I didn’t see the point. You just sit inside and watch movies all day? Over Labor Day weekend? Ouch.
Then someone dangled the term “media pass” under my nose. Not one to refuse freebies, especially in a place like Telluride, I signed up to watch movies all day for four days.
My first non-adventure trip since Milan went like this:
On Day One, I figured I could fit in a run before the media orientation meeting. Once I hit the See Forever Trail on the ski mountain, most of my motivation to attend orientation was already gone. An hour later, I was still on that trail, somewhere around 12,500 feet, bliss-drunk from taking in the 360-degree-views of the surrounding mountain ranges. I justified my behavior using the more-bang-for-your-buck mentality: a media schmooze only lasts 45 minutes, a high-altitude oxygen-gulping lung burn can last an entire weekend. Besides, I had just gained 2,000 feet of elevation in three miles.
I didn’t end up making it to my first film until that evening. By then it was dark, so why not? Tamara Drew was British, and quirky, and tragic, and outrageously funny. A good experience, but not enough to change my Day Two plan to include more movies.
Day Two went pretty much the same, except that instead of skipping out on the media orientation, I missed every movie playing between 8:00 am until 10:00 pm, when I attended the premier of the dystopian drama Never Let Me Go. Also British, the movie was as disturbing as it was beautiful. I blame the fact that I sobbed through most of it, therefore dehydrating myself, as the reason I walked out rather unsteadily. Well, that and the bottle of red wine I’d snuck into the theater.
The after party at Excelsior featured more red wine. Emboldened by the alcohol, I chatted up directors, producers, actors, film critics, and especially authors, whose books had been turned into films like the one I’d just seen. Blame it on my fuzzy star struck brain, but as I walked to the gondola that would take me on a 13-minute ride back to my hotel, it occurred to me that there could very well be such a thing as indoor adventure travel.
The idea solidified the next day, when too hung over to indulge in any outdoor sports, I chugged water and went to the noon showing of The Illusionist, a British-French animated film and headed to the Silver Medallion presentation centered around actor Colin Firth. As Firth accepted his award onstage, to the applause of 650 festival participants, he choked up, bringing his co-star from The King’s Speech and the director onstage beside him, deeming the threesome a real life triangle of bromance.
As the movie started to role, I had an insider’s perspective for the first time in my movie-watching life. I had seen the people behind the characters, the artists, and suddenly the process of making a film became just as important as getting caught up in the story of the movie itself. In a way, it felt like seeing a movie, really seeing a movie, for the first time, and despite having spent the last seven hours indoors (with a sizable headache), I was suddenly wild with adrenaline and adoration and gratitude. Exactly the same way I felt atop the See Forever Trail two days earlier.
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Jayme Otto is a travel blogger and contributing editor for Women’s Adventure and a freelancer at large. Look for her regular blogs on www.womensadventuremagazine.com.
