69°f/20.5°C , overcast with storms and possible heavy rain expected later.
I am continuing to read The Assassin's Cloak, and am still fascinated by the many diary entries for each day. Today, a writer reflected on a recent trip to the shore, and ended saying that he was sending his whole family for a few days, as they had not had "a changd of air" in several years.
A change of air is certsinly a very apt description for most vacations, isn't it, both literally and figuratively? I realized with a shock that Larry and i have not had a real vacation in 5 years. We have been on short trips of two or three days, and we spent almost a week in Florida 2 years ago helping our youngest out of a difficult financial situation. But that was mostly a stressful trip, with the exception of an overnight stop at Tybee Island, near Savannah, Georgia.
So I would say we were more than ready for an extended break. Which is funny when I think about it, because vacations were never much of a part of my life. As a child in a family of 13, trips of any kind were rare. We made occasional day trips to Westmoreland State Park, which had a beach on the banks of the wide lower reaches Potomac River,
and a few times, once for a whole week (how my parents afforded that I will never know), we stayed in a cabin on Skyline Drive.
Once I was married, vacations just didn't happen. At first, when we lived in Virginia, babies came too quickly! We went on weekend camping trips, though, and i could have our van packed and ready to go in 20 minutes. We had a large box of camping gear, sleeping bags that hung, rolled tightly, on hooks in the van. I would pack bread, honey, peanut butter, eggs, cooking oil, potatoes, apples, and Dinty Moore canned stew or sometimes macaroni and cheese packaged dinners, clothes for everyone, and we were off. Oh, and we would pick up a bottle of Boone's Farm wine! At 99 cents, that cheap wine was a real treat. We'd listen to John Denver as we traveled through the mountains--it was always the mountains, never the beach.
Then we moved here to West Virginia, began homesteading, getting livestock and growing gardens and other crops. Life was hard then as this place was pretty rough and money very scarce. Leaving for even a day or two was out of the question when there were goats and later cows to be milked. Later, with jobs and college, sons leaving and grandkids arriving, travel meant going to see our boys or visiting my parents, all usually short weekend trips. Once, Larry and I and our 3 youngest took a week-long camping vacation in the eastern West Virginia mountains, literally being tourists in our own state, while our oldest son took care of things at home.
Larry and Tommy, about 1989, at Dolly Sods, WV, I think. I had seen very little of West Virginia before this trip, oddly. Boy did that change when I started storytelling! I think I have been on almost every two-lane road in the state by now.
When I finished my undergraduate in 1991, we took our first week-long trip to the beach in North Carolina and went back a few times after that, usually to Ocracoke Iskand in the Outer Banks.
First time at the beach, 1991. I was 40 and had never seen the ocean before that.
Then I started working fulltime and began my Master's program, a year-round program that didn't leave time for vacations. And when I finished that, I found storytelling, which absorbed any free time not used for family. After I retired we began traveling, but then Covid put a stop to that. I took a solo trip to see our Florida son and our California grandson, and Larry went to Florida to see his sister, and in 2021 we spent a week in Florida visiting family. Since then, though, we've been mostly homebodies except for the occasional weekend jaunt.
So yes, we were past due for that change of air. And it really is just that, no matter where one goes. Colorado air is completely different from our sultry West Virginia summer air--drier, yet harder to breathe because oxygen is thinner at those altitudes. But there is the scent of the many evergreens, too, and here at home, with all the rain this year, we are all having issues with pollen.
What we both realized after this trip is that we needed this break, and that we need to be sure to plan one next year too. We're not getting any younger, after all!
Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.
