Early Summer Vacation

My vacation ends today, a wonderful and much needed period of refreshment - including a great three day trip to Brown County, IN.  We spent most of it at home, though, working on little side projects and tending to the yard and garden.  We ate lots of ice cream; We enjoyed lots of fresh strawberries coming on strong in our garden.  Wyatt caught a few fish.  I put another 150 miles or so on my bike.  We spent about five cumulative hours in the indoor water park at Abe Martin Lodge located in Brown County State Park.  We bought both edible and inedible keepsakes from the tiny stores in Nashville:  peanut butter and Jack Daniels fudge; a double espresso and mocha creation known as the Sledgehammer; new belts and wristbands and barrettes of leather.  Anna and I built a see-saw for Elise's seventh birthday.  And we had two large family meals.  The first for Elise's birthday consisting of steaks marinated in rosemary and garlic as well as broccoli salad and completed by a white cake and white sugar frosting topped with more of those fresh strawberries.  The second on Memorial Day consisting of a full ham brined along with roasted cauliflower and fresh salad with pineapple, crystallized ginger and shaved almonds.  In other words, we lived bountifully and heartily.

Our trip to Brown County began on Wednesday, as we packed up Cooper's big suburban and wound our way down into the first hills and hollers of southern Indiana.  Last year, we made a similar trip around the same time of year: near the close of the school year but before the intensity of summer swim lessons and summer church programming picks up.  But last year we tried the hero's route:  camping the first two nights and finishing off the trip in a rustic cabin where we could finally shower and enjoy at least marginal air conditioning from a window unit that buzzed and hammered its meager production.  We learned our lesson from that experience, having arrived home even more exhausted than when we left and certainly at the point of getting on each other's nerves.  This year we choose the assurance of fixed accommodations and the easy entertainment of the water park in the lodge.  How much does peace of mind cost?  About $100 dollars more a night than tent camping is about where I would put it.

And so, even though the days were full, they were also tremendously enjoyable - giving ourselves over to only one thing at a time, moving from rest to recreation to work to feasting to rest again.  It is how I imagine life should be much of the time, and I am left wondering why mine is not more so.  The secret o' life, as Mr. Taylor says, "is in enjoying the passing of time," and that's what the greatest gift of this vacation was ... enjoying the gift of each day, singularly and simply.

Wes