I was on a solo mission. A mission to discover. I traveled to places I’d never been before, and the final goal of the mission was to discover myself. I started off in my home state of Colorado. I went to the few places I hadn’t been before. It was breathtaking, but it was a part of me I already knew so well. I then flew to the Sierra Nevadas and Cascades. It was brilliant to be in a new mountain range, but it was still so familiar. When I went to the Bahamas, that was when things began to change. I had never been to the ocean. I fell in love with the water, so much so that I couldn’t stand being near it. It was like having to look at the love of your life but not being able to talk to them or be seen by them. I had to be in the water, or out of sight of it. So I cut that part of the trip early by three days. I then went across the Atlantic to the Swiss Alps. Finally, a completely different nature of mountains surrounded me. It was a completely new playground. But after two weeks, they became familiar too, and were almost indifferent from my home mountains. I had a few places with mountains left on my list, but I decided to skip them because I knew I wouldn’t discover anything, “new.” The city was the next place to find, and what better European city to visit than Paris. I traveled to Paris with skepticism because I knew that the bustle of the city often made me uncomfortable. Yet it was beautiful, and even though the bustle often annoyed me, it was quite stunning. It began to get old though, just as all the other destinations had. But it was the second to last day that I discovered something new: a girl. She was as striking as Paris. She had dark brown eyes, but they glowed. I would’ve been able to see her eyes shining out in pitch darkness. Or maybe it was her hair, completely contrasting the color brown. It was red, brilliant red. And her skin, soft and brown, always comforting. Finally, her personality. It was vibrant and beautiful and all I had ever wanted. The one discovery I was missing was love. So it started as a solo mission, but it ended as a duo.