Travel Days

If you want to teach your kids your values, go where you love and take your children with you. My nephew Ryan said that. My children are grown now, teaching values to the children they gave birth to and the children they work with. We trot along behind – to an island in the Puget Sound where we enjoy nature and Native American culture with our grandchildren, to a 6th grade classroom in Soquel where Joel performs science experiments at the Science Fair for our son’s students.

These are our travel days. Largely unencumbered now by small children and aging parents, we have vowed to make pilgrimages to the places we have come to love – Ashland, Oregon, the Mendocino Coast -- and visit places we think we would love – Glacier Park, the San Juan Islands, a sweep across Canada by rail.

One thing I notice when we travel – I constantly embroider the present with plans for the future. On a recent walk in Lithia Park I plunked down on a bench to watch ducks be silly in a pond and thought about a park bench Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Why not keep my focus on the beautiful garden in front of me?

In my mind, I wander down another garden path into the streets of the City of Light. My soul stretches luxuriously to absorb the history and beauty of the architecture like a sea sponge expands in the warm scented water of a perfect tub bath. A duck waddles around behind my ankle, tucked under the bench I am sitting on and I bring my thoughts back to focus on the present moment.

If I were in Paris now, would my focus turn as easily from arches and spires to a Mediterranean shore I’ve yet to visit, only to return to the pigeons in the street?

If my body and my mind wandered on the same path, would that be the travel experience I am seeking?

Go where you love, and take all of you.