travel

Travel has always been a passion of mine.  I remember at the age of seven, my parents waking us in the middle of the night, station wagon packed, to begin the drive from Upstate New York to Florida. It would take three days. My three siblings and I each brought a small suitcase of toys, card games, books, craft projects. There were no electronic devices to occupy our attention. Only a CB radio we got when my oldest brother turned thirteen. We would spend the next few days on the road, seeing the east coast out the window, and playing with our treasures.  We would stop off for picnics along the way, and marvel at the way people's accents would change the further south we went.

Florida, to a small town girl from the north, was another world.  There were palm trees, lizards, oranges the size of softballs, coconuts, mounds of colorful shells in the sand -- gems to be found, and the tourquoise ocean, lulling us to sleep every night.  I still have some of the shells I gathered as a child. And even now I remember the feeling of peace I experienced walking the beach at night with my father.  It was just one time, and it was just he and I, that night.  But we talked about the moon, and the tides and the magic of the earth.  And it changed me.  It opened me up to something much bigger than I had been exposed to before.  To ideas and feelings and a desire to know the world.