Looking back through photographs from earlier chapters of our lives can feel like looking at a completely different person. I did that today and saw her there: full of grit, spirit and an exhilarating energy. I felt a deep wave of love and admiration for her. I am forever grateful that I was able to build the unforgettable memories that have carried me to where I am today.
Today, twenty-five years later, I went looking for her again.
I remember the most beautiful blue sky when I stepped out of the tent early that morning. There was a twinge of sadness at finally leaving this amazing place. We had travelled with little more than backpacks, a rental car and a map. Nothing planned. Free as birds, driving down long, straight roads with nothing on either side.
I remember towns shimmering like oases in the distance; the fresh air on exposed cliff edges after gruelling hikes; and a rugged helicopter ride with open doorways, looking down into the deep, winding walls of a red-rock canyon. I remember a ten-mile trek climbing a thousand vertical feet up a relentless, completely exposed wall of switchbacks, and a night spent camping at a ghost town with nobody there but us.
It was a new world compared with the green and gentle landscape of the UK, experienced by a young couple with more fun in them than sense.
With the car finally packed, we stopped at our last destination. It was early, before the sun had begun to build its fierce heat, and the water was glass-calm. There were no crowds, but the lake hummed with boats and jet skis – ours included.
Then the sound disappeared.
It was an incredibly eerie, dreamlike experience. No engine hum, no wake, no voices – just our jet skis bobbing in the quiet desert canyon.
We headed back to the marina, but it was deserted. We shouted, but nobody answered. We could find no way to turn off the jet skis, so we stepped off the still-running machines and left them gently bobbing away from the silent dock. It felt deeply unsettling. We had no idea where everybody had gone.
Eventually, we found them gathered in the shadows of a sports shop, their backs to the door and their faces raised toward a large television screen. Nobody spoke.
Millions of people encountered that moment in different ways, but my own transition into it will never leave me. One minute I was young, fit, and having the absolute time of my life on the open water. The next, I was standing at the back of a silent room, watching the world change.
At first, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. My head was filled with questions.
Why are they watching this? Is it a film? Haven’t I seen this before?
One of the Twin Towers was burning. Then a plane came into view and struck the second tower.
Whether it was live coverage or a replay, I didn’t know. But in that instant, the possibility that the first crash had been a terrible accident disappeared. The shift in reality was so sudden and intense that it registered physically. It felt as though the ground were falling away beneath my feet.
That is where I was when the world broke.
I was a young visitor, far from home, standing at the back of a marina shop as the full horror began to unfold. The memory is etched into my core.
In the middle of a global crisis, the local people showed us immense warmth. They looked after two young British travellers who were far from home and had no idea what to do next.
Our flight from LAX was cancelled. With American airspace closed, we couldn’t leave, and suddenly we had nowhere to go. We eventually found a room at a nearby hotel and casino – the Hacienda, I think. A place built for noise, lights and crowds was strangely quiet, but we were safe.
The roads were quiet too, as were the towns we visited. I remember pulling up at a petrol station and being asked why we weren’t flying a flag on our car. Of course we bought one immediately.
‘God Bless the U.S.A.’ by Lee Greenwood seemed to play constantly on the radio. We sang along with tears in our eyes as we drove around, trying to find ways to fill the suspended hours.
It took days to get a telephone call out of America to the UK. Mobile phones were not part of our lives then, and the telephone lines simply weren’t working.
Our parents believed we had been heading to New York that morning.
We had changed our plans and our tickets because we were running low on money, but we hadn’t told them. While we were safely stranded near Lake Mead, the timeline they had in their heads was terrifying. They sat at home in Britain, watching the footage repeat endlessly, with no way of knowing where we were or whether we were safe.
You can imagine the reconnection
In some strange way, we were sheltered from the worst of the immediate chaos. We felt trapped and uncertain, but we also felt safe, looked after and remarkably calm. Around us, however, the raw grief of an entire country was impossible to miss. The streets were empty because people were inside, glued to their televisions. Flags appeared everywhere. Fear, grief and patriotism seemed to fill the air together.
When the airspace reopened, we headed to LAX to continue our journey to Hawaii.
The tension at the airport is still something I struggle to describe. Armed National Guard troops patrolled the terminals. Security lines stretched out the doors, and the fear was palpable.
We stood, small and wide-eyed, with our enormous, heavily loaded expedition backpacks. We had come straight from the most beautiful adventure of our lives and walked into a place transformed by security and fear.
We were intercepted almost as soon as we entered and taken quickly through security. The speed and intensity of it frightened us. At a time when everyone and everything felt suspect, we were two conspicuous travellers carrying massive packs into a high-alert airport.
Once we were finally aboard the plane, the pilot spoke to us. He told us he had promised his own family that he would be home that night.
I remember thinking that it must have taken immense courage to make that flight. It wasn’t an ordinary pre-flight announcement. He was acknowledging the fear inside the cabin and offering us the only reassurance he could: that he intended to return safely to the people he loved.
We needed to hear it.
The cabin held a strange mixture of intense, breathless silence and collective relief. We were amongst the first passengers to fly out of LAX after the airspace reopened, heading across the Pacific towards Hawaii.
It felt like breaking through a storm cloud into pure light.
Arriving in paradise after such a frightening flight felt profound, but we were no longer quite the same two carefree travellers who had taken to the water on Lake Mead a few days before.
I’m not trying to overstate my experience of September 11. I was not at the heart of the tragedy. I was simply a young British visitor who happened to be in America when it happened.
But twenty-five years have passed, and these memories remain etched deeply into my soul when I often cannot remember what I did yesterday.
There are moments we carry with us until our final breath.
This is one of mine.
One British traveller’s memories of September 11, 2001