Vacation = the opposite of being present

My mom’s parents didn’t take vacations because they had a farm. Taking care of their animals took a lot of time, plus they lived about ten miles from town. It wasn’t like they could have some high school kid do it, like when I took care of a person’s single dog or bird after school.

They visited us once in Alaska, and my mom seemed to wish they came more regularly. She talked of their commitment to the farm like they were in prison, and it was their own poor choices that put them there.

I have a friend who doesn’t like to fly. He likes to stay home, in our hometown, in his house that he built mostly himself.

I used to think of my grandparents and my friend as being confined, held back, afraid of adventure. Now, I’m striving to be more like them. I’ll fly to run our boat in Bristol Bay, but I’ve lost much of my desire to see the world. I’ve come to realize that seeing might be believing, but it isn’t knowing. The world contains many interesting places, and many interesting people. But I can’t know all of them. And seeing them doesn’t necessarily do any of us any good.

On the couple trips I took to South America, I felt like I should visit as many different places as possible, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to settle down somewhere that I liked well enough, and get to know the people, and maybe even get a job. Passing through made me feel empty.

Now I want to put roots down. Roots absorb sustenance and hold onto the ground in a storm. They connect seemingly separate lives. Our old house in Colorado sat surrounded by dozens of aspens that were really one tree, linked below the surface. Roots even travel in a slow, deliberate way. In the Amazon, I saw walking palms, roots outstretched mid-step, moving towards a little better light.

That’s how I want to live. Deliberately, conscious of my surroundings to make the most of them, rooted, but not stuck.