I tried doing the party thing on New Year’s Eve, but I just wasn’t into it. Couldn’t get into the spirit. So I came back early and after a walk on the beach I decided to go to my favorite spot. I never had a favorite spot before, but I found one about a month ago. I won’t tell you where it is, because I don’t want you to go there. Find your own. I like this place because it’s one of those rare beautiful spots that has not been built up yet. Funny how so many times we see a beautiful place and immediately want to build on it―forgetting that the very thing that makes it so beautiful is the absence of buildings. From my spot, you can’t even see any buildings; every time I've gone, I've been the only one there. It’s a long walk over rocks and jungle, but that’s also part of its charm. It’s not just the being there, but the getting there and coming back that make this place special to me― the slow and steady easing away from and then back into the things of man. So around 11 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, I grabbed a blanket and a flashlight and headed out.

Walking along the road I ran into the partiers―friends having a good time, couples holding hands or making out, obnoxious drunks who can’t seem to enjoy anything without shouting about it. An acquaintance stopped me and asked where I was going. I told him. “What’s going on there?” he asked with a confused look on his face. “Nothing, I hope.” We went our own way. As I stepped off the road, I started to question the wisdom of trekking out like this, out across rocks and jungle, into the wilderness, by myself in the middle of the night. Then I remembered a line from a famous poem, “Caminante, no hay camino―se hace el camino al andar.” I keep going. “Wanderer, there is no path―the path is made by walking.”

And I have to say, I only fell once. Used to walking on paths, I was lighting the way ahead of me when I should have been looking underfoot. I was so busy looking forward, that I forgot to watch my step. I got a nasty cut on my knee, but I honestly can’t think of a better lesson to learn on New Year’s Eve. Our lives, our communities, our world would be a different place if we’d learn to watch our step instead of trampling off recklessly when we wander into the unseen or unknown. As I reached the short stretch of jungle I needed to cross, the anxiety crept back in. I fired off a quick prayer: "Please don't let my flashlight go out.” And somehow before I knew it, in the dark of night I'd found a better, quicker, faster path than I ever had by the light of day. I know there's a good lesson in there, too; I just have no idea how to articulate it.

By night the trip took twice as long. By the time midnight rolled around I was only halfway where I wanted to be, on an empty rocky beach. After glancing at my watch, I stopped to reflect on the year gone by and to give thanks for things past and things to come. Then I sat on a rock and as I looked out across the water and over the rocks, as if on cue, over the moonlit waves, the fireworks show 10 miles away started. I couldn't have picked a better spot to view them if I'd tried.

I finally reached my spot around 1 a.m. It was a lot windier than I had hoped it would be, but that was probably a good thing. The roaring wind drowned out a lot of the jungle noises that probably would have made me very nervous. I picked the flattest rock I could find, tucked in between the jungle and the water and just lay there listening to the water lap against the rocks, and the leaves rustling in the wind … and trying very hard to ignore the "what-on-earth-was-that?!?!" noises. If you've never tried to sleep on a pile of rocks, I don't recommend it. I do however recommend that you stare up at the sky and count the shooting stars as you try to make out the constellations. It is amazing how many shooting stars you see out here. On any given night, if you stare up long enough you'll see them ...

Sometime around 3 a.m. I managed to fall asleep, and then around 4 I woke up again as the tide moved in and wet my blanket. It was around then that my brain started to protest. "Go home!" it said. "There are snakes, and spiders, and scorpions … you don't even have a fire! This is crazy!" I started thinking of jaguars and crocodiles. Then I thought, how sad it is that we've become so alienated from nature that I can't even spend one night in it without starting to panic. Our ancestors slept like this every single night and thought nothing of it. How pathetic, how artificial have we become? Later I saw a boat casting out a searchlight over and over. I started imagining drug dealers, and army patrols all around―did I mention I hadn't gotten much sleep?

As dawn got closer, the birds started to come out, and that helped. I watched the pelicans and wondered if they ever look down on us and wish they could walk as effortlessly as humans, jumping from rock to rock like there’s nothing to it.

As the sunrise got nearer, I felt like going for a swim. I’d forgotten my snorkel gear, so I went skinny dipping instead. And I greeted the sunrise and the New Year alone, naked, and with arms wide open ...