On the other hand, The Sainted One and I are quite excited about our summer vacation. We’ll be celebrating our 30th anniversary and my 65th birthday with a road trip through Eastern Oregon and Washington, with stops at the Painted Hills, John Day Fossil Beds and a microbrewery festival in La Grande. We’ll spend two nights in Joseph and our last night in Wenatchee. As our virgin passports gather dust at home, we’ll be making dust of our own, following thin dotted lines on maps in search of something interesting, visiting small town bars and chatting with the regulars, searching for geocaches, and because we’re Vacation Book Bingers, plowing through two or three books apiece.

Our highly mobile friends appear to accept us even though we regularly decline invitations to join them on safaris and cruises. The Sainted One and I often discuss this anomaly of being surrounded by world citizens while we stay close to home, and we’ve come to understand why we’re so inclined.

Pat Detmer

We had similar Midwestern upbringings, childhoods of constant movement and transition. I came from a middle-class family whose father never said “no” to a promotion, this in the day when it was career suicide to take yourself off the corporate treadmill in pursuit of a different form of happiness. We moved an average of every two years and had barrels of goods that we hauled from place to place but never emptied to the bottom. Why bother? The Sainted One’s transitions were more frenetic: a mother with many boyfriends, quick moves out of state and back again when things didn’t work out, time spent with Grandma while Mother disappeared for a while, living with a buddy’s family in order to be able to finish high school.

Once the choice became our own, we dug the tent stakes deep and declared ourselves done. We enjoy our little road trips and tours throughout the U.S. and come back to the same home we’ve lived in for almost 25 years. And once we get back here, there’s no one to surprise us with the news that once again, we’ll be moving far away.

And that, in itself, is journey enough.

You can reach Pat Detmer — whose virgin passport will finally be stamped during a February trek to Puerto Vallarta next year — at patdetmer@aol.com.

Bob Ingalls

Newcastle composer Bob Ingalls describes his version of “Ave Maria” as an experience.

The eight-minute piece, written for choir and strings, brings the music to its listeners, as three sopranos stand embedded in the audience.

After singing a verse, the musicians then move to a different spot, keeping audiences guessing.

“The concept is that the people who are listening, by the middle of the piece, will really be wondering, where is the music going to come from next?” Ingalls said. “That causes you to, some extent, suspend your sense of belief and awe as you listen and truly get into the piece itself.”

Ingalls’ “Ave Maria for Choir & Strings” is one of 12 finalists in the 2015 Sacrarium International Composer’s Competition. He’ll travel to Ukraine in May, where the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra and Galician Academic Chamber Choir will perform his and the other finalists’ compositions at a concert.

He will also present a paper as part of the accompanying International Composers’ Forum. Ingalls, who directs the choir at West Seattle’s Holy Rosary Catholic Church, wrote about a topic he knows well — using sacred spaces to enhance sacred music.

“The actual piece that I wrote for the competition makes use of space within a cathedral or a concert hall to enhance the music itself,” Ingalls said. “So the music is really putting into practice what I discussed in my paper.”

The graduate of the Julliard School of Music has spent more than 40 years conducting, playing and composing music, most recently as the artistic director of his own Musica Sacra Chamber Chorale.

That group is currently on hiatus, Ingalls said, while he focuses on other projects.

The longtime Newcastle resident and his wife Cathy leave for Ukraine on May 4, taking a 22-hour flight through Amsterdam. Lviv, Ukraine, musicians will play his piece at a May 10 concert.

Ingalls will compete against composers from across the world. Musicians hailing from Spain, Italy and China are among the finalists. Ingalls is one of just three finalists from the United States.

“I don’t really expect to win, but I think it was such an honor to be asked,” Ingalls said.

Ingalls has received numerous awards for his work as a conductor, but this is the first time one of his written pieces has received such distinction, he said.

His work’s intent is to make people spiritually rise up a little higher than they would normally, he added.

“The ‘Ave Maria’ or the ‘Hail Mary’ is a prayer that is very close to the hearts of many, many, many people,” Ingalls said. “There’s a spiritual sense that you can get from the prayer itself, and what I’m attempting to do musically is to enhance that experience.”