Traveling

Since I've been told that I get to go to Chicago, my mind has been filled with traveling thoughts... If I could get a job traveling and then teaching about the places that I travel to... well, that would be my idea of the PERFECT job. The TRAVEL Channel just has to interview me!

So I'm going to Chicago -- prior to my trip to Washington D.C. -- prior to flying off to Edinburgh... How COOL is that??? I'm feeling pretty lucky (Even though I didn't win the set of Magic Tree House books and I'm not the winner for the HEB Excellence in Teaching award, and something else didn't happen but I've forgotten what it is... too many applications, I guess) I'M GOING TO CHICAGO, WASHINGTON D.C. AND EDINBURGH (and all of Scotland because if I can make it around Texas, I certainly can visit all of Scotland!) How fun!

But I won't be going to Chicago until next month so in order to tide me over my ROAD TRIP FEVER, I'm going out to El Paso. Yes, I am going to see my beautiful grandchildren and I'm going to drag them around El Paso taking pictures of all the historic sights to put into an interactive Promethean flipchart 'cause I told told the district I would make some of those things... and it would help my second grade team when we teach Texas history in Social Studies... and of course, I will use them in North Queensferry Primary School. So, no, it's not really a vacation (or holiday, as the Scots say), it's a field trip. ButitwillbeaFUNfieldtripbecauseIthinklearningisfunandmybeautifulboyswilllearn moreaboutthehistoryoftheircityandalltherestofusbenefitaswell. (pant, pant)

Which means I have to plan... LOTS of plans. The fun part... the dreaming and imagining part... (the figuring out what to put on the flipchart is the not-so-fun part) but it's all a part of THE TRIP. Which reminds me of other trips, and in my mind I go back to those memorable moments and relive them all over again. I enjoy them and savor them... turn them over a bit in my mind... then I dissect them, just a little, so I can figure out what it was that made it memorable. Then the possiblilty of recreating it can be had. Some things just can't be recreated like the startling turquoise color of the water of New Zealand... that's just an unexpected beauty that makes your soul sing as your heart flies into your throat when you first glimpse it. But then there's having a bagel boy at a regular morning stop and learning to hail a cab and having strangers ask you where the nearest subway stop is and for a while I pretend that I am a native New Yorker... those moments can be recreated. I can jam-pack experiences into an amazingly short amount of time. I can throw myself into a frenzy of sightseeing and things to do so that I am breathless and barely able to sleep. But I've also found that for me, it's important to find time to have quiet moments to sit on an irrigation wall listening to the sea swell against the shore while rushes dance in the wind and bullfrogs sing to each other as the townspeople greet each other in Japanese on their evening walks... those moments can be "recreated" as well by knowing that I need to leave time for the quiet to creep in...the time when I am doing nothing, moving nothing, just absorbing the sounds and smells and the beauty like a sponge. Just "being".

Which means that in El Paso, I will find time -alone- to go up onto Transmountain Road. I'll find time to to park and walk a distance into the desert to once again feel the dry breezes swirl around me carrying the scent of sage, dust, and creosote. I'll find time to listen for the swish of a reptile tail or the thump of a rabbit's bound to heal, albeit temporarily, my homesickness for the desert. For that's the other part of travel... it's price. Those moments that live so indelibly in my heart, the moments that I live for as I travel, always cost a slice of my heart.