“There were just people everywhere,” Ayisha Jessa, 31, a climber from London who recently visited Everest’s base camp, told BBC Magazine. At the nearby village of Namachi, she said, “It’s completely commercialized — everything is intended for the Western traveller.”

In theory, I like a challenge. In many arenas, the adrenaline from contending with the unknown or untried evokes a sense of being alive that few other experiences parallel. I remember the tickling sensation in my 9-year-old tummy, my eyes following the railroad tracks in Aalborg, Denmark all the way into the horizon.

The roofers came! After sixteen years of dreading the tropical downpours that relentlessly revealed new leaks, I can barely believe it will actually end. As if to emphasize the forces we’re up against, our rescuers were only able work the first day of the first week because, refusing to acknowledge the calendar’s dry season, pounding rains impeded reparation’s progress.

When did the sense of adventure wane? Had I become so adult and responsible that maintaining the daily to-do list was my highest aspiration? Sure, what seems natural to so many women: