TRAVELING AND THEN STAYING PUT
Mark Twain famously wrote about the positive aspects of travel:
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
I was privileged in 2022 to travel all over the U.S.A. in our pop-up camper and then spend 33 days in Scotland and North England in August and September.
I enjoyed the beaches and art scene in St. Petersburg while celebrating a family get together of cousins. The Gullah History in South Carolina, the "Redneck Coast " of Florida and some amazing Civil Rights sites across the South brought diverse perspectives to my 73 year old brain. Whitney Plantation in Louisiana was particularly informative , since it focused on plantation life from the perspective of enslaved people.
Spring bought me to the Nashville Lutheran Retreat Center, along the banks of the Harpeth River to celebrate our 50th Wedding Anniversary at the place where Cathe and I started the adventure. How wonderful to share this milestone with our 4 kids and their spouses.
Our Fall Journey across the Highlands of Scotland, the Orkney Islands, the Borders, the Lake District, Yorkshire and Hadrian's Wall brought me historical perspective about the human experience that one only learns by "being there."
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Following all this roaming, now I'm ensconced at home in Ann Arbor to reflect, ponder, and savor a slower pace in Michigan's winter. The day to day life of preparing meals, staying healthy , communication with family and just "being" contrasts the busyness of exploring the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma or or Skara Brea at the tip of Scotland. This "quiet time" is truly a gift; the experiences of our travels are lived again more fully.
I don't believe I would have understood the importance of this "slowing down after travel" had Cathe 's Total Knee Replacement (TKR) surgery not happened in early November. This event thrust me into the role of full time caregiver, homemaker, chauffeur, and general maintenance dude. My eyes and my being were opened up significantly to how much is involved in keeping a home "operational'. While I've prided myself over the years as a solid "partner" and "helper", I truly had no idea until now how much is required to plan and prepare meals, shop, transport, keep track of medicines and physical therapy appointments, clean house, and maintain some semblance of routine!! I now have a much more realistic, comprehensive understanding of 50 years of effort on Cathe's part to keep this place going.
So...TRAVELING AND THEN STAYING PUT.....lots to learn.....
May this time be renewing and refreshing to you.
Getting outside of your comfortable, familiar surroundings is important, be it by travel, reading, watching, listening etc. I recently heard an acquaintance who lives in a wealthy, Caucasian community ask, "What poor people"? They could not see it, because their world was too small.
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