The mathematics of permanence
It's 11:40 and I'm sitting in a small café near the entrance to Petra, nursing what the menu optimistically calls coffee. My legs are still processing yesterday's hike to the Monastery, and I've given myself permission to have a slow morning before venturing back into the archaeological park.
The café owner, Hassan, keeps refilling my cup without asking. He's probably noticed I'm the type who arrives ten minutes before opening and lingers long after most tourists have moved on. There's a comfort in being recognized, even after just three days.
I've been thinking about the High Place of Sacrifice. Not the climb itself—though my knees have opinions about that—but something one of the Bedouin guides said while I was catching my breath near the top. He pointed to a juniper tree clinging to a crack in the rock face and said, "This tree, maybe 300 years. The stone, 2000 years. Your visit, one morning. All the same to the mountain."
It wasn't meant to be profound. He was just making conversation while waiting for his next group. But it's been sitting with me since yesterday afternoon.
I'm 342 days into this journey. 158 days left until I turn 51 and fly home to Kristiansand. When I started, 500 days felt like an ocean of time. Now it feels like watching sand slip through my fingers, each grain a day I can't get back.
Petra has a way of putting that in perspective.
Yesterday, after the High Place, I spent an hour sitting in front of the Royal Tombs. Just sitting. A young couple asked if I was okay—I must have looked strange, this tall Norwegian planted on a rock like a tourist who'd forgotten how to tourist. I told them I was fine, just thinking.
What I was actually doing was trying to understand scale. Not physical scale—I got that the moment I first saw the Treasury, when my brain couldn't quite process how humans carved something that massive into solid rock. No, I was trying to understand temporal scale.
The Nabataeans built this city starting around the 4th century BC. They carved homes and tombs and temples into these rose-red cliffs. They engineered water systems that still make the IT part of my brain light up with appreciation. They created something that would outlast their civilization by two millennia.
And here I am, one person, 500 days, trying to change myself before some arbitrary birthday deadline.
The absurdity isn't lost on me.
Hassan just brought me a small plate of dates and nuts. "You think too much," he said, tapping his temple. "Petra is for feeling, not thinking."
He's probably right.
But here's what I keep coming back to: those Nabataean architects and engineers didn't build Petra to last 2000 years. They built it for their lives, their generation. The permanence was almost accidental—a side effect of working with stone in a dry climate.
Maybe that's the lesson. Maybe I've been thinking about this whole journey wrong. I came here looking for some transformation, some change that would stick, something permanent. But what if the point isn't to build something that lasts? What if it's just to build something authentic for right now?
The juniper tree on the cliff face doesn't worry about whether it'll survive another 300 years. It just grows where it can, adapting to the rock, taking what water it finds, existing in this moment.
I sound like a self-help book. Sorry.
The truth is simpler: I've been in Wadi Musa for three days, and I'm not ready to leave. Not because there's more to see—I've covered most of what I came for. But because there's something about this place that's making me reconsider the math of my journey.
I've been treating these 500 days like a project with a deadline. Visit enough places, collect enough experiences, and somehow I'll emerge transformed, ready to "change the world" in whatever way my restless brain thinks that means.
But sitting in front of those 2000-year-old tombs yesterday, I realized: the Nabataeans didn't change the world. They built homes. They carved tombs for their dead. They solved engineering problems so their families could have water. Small things. Immediate things. Things that mattered to them in their time.
The world-changing part happened later, accidentally, when archaeologists and tourists and people like me showed up to be humbled by what they left behind.
Hassan is watching me write. "You write book?" he asks.
"Just a blog," I say. "Travel stories."
He nods. "Good. People need stories. Not big stories. Small stories. This is how we remember."
I'm going to head back into Petra this afternoon. Not to hike or explore—I've done enough of that. I want to find a quiet spot, maybe near the Street of Facades, and just sit. Watch the light change on the rock. Notice the tourists noticing. Be present in this specific moment of my specific 500 days.
Because maybe that's enough. Maybe the transformation I'm looking for isn't some grand revelation at the end of this journey. Maybe it's just the accumulated weight of 500 days of paying attention, of being present, of noticing juniper trees and talking to café owners and sitting in front of ancient tombs until my legs go numb.
Small things. Immediate things. Things that matter right now.
The permanence, if it comes, will be accidental.
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P.S. - Hassan just told me there's a spot near the amphitheater where the afternoon light hits the rock face in a way that makes it look like it's glowing from within. He says most tourists miss it because they're rushing to see everything. I'm going to go find it. Not to photograph it or write about it, just to see it.
Sometimes that's enough.