Hi, it's Maggie. For the next two weeks of episodes, friend of the show, Samia Bashir,

will be sharing poems with you every morning. I'll be back in the host chair on February 18th.

I'm Samia Bashir, and this is the slowdown.

The other day, a friend of mine was caught in a transportation holdup.

Her train was stuck, then rerouted.

Her journey was about to get a lot longer and more circuitous.

My response to her then, which, rather miraculously, she found helpful, was to make it an adventure.

Our most important journeys often take us through vistas that we hadn't, couldn't even imagine when we took our first steps.

Leaning into adventure forces us to embrace uncertainty.

Sometimes we have to follow the road where it goes.

Sometimes paving a new road is the only way to reach our intended destination.

Either way, where we land might not look like we thought it would.

Either way, we are unlikely to arrive as the same person we were when our journey began.

Today's poem takes us into the adventure of discovery, which, it turns out, is rarely simple,

even when we are at our most prepared, even when we are at our most prepared, even when we think we're sure what we're going to find.

Diving into the wreck by Audrey and Rich.

First, having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked

the edge of the knife blade, I put on the body armor of black rubber, the absurd flippers,

the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this, not like Cousteau with his

assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner, but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is

always there, hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner.

We know what it is used for, we who have used it.

...