Finding Freedom on Vacation

One of the things I love about vacations is how, if I allow myself to, I can truly leave more baggage at home than I bring on the trip.  I have to say, it's not always easy for me to 'vacate the premises'.

I'm one of those people who will never have a completely clean desk or a completely clear head, no matter how hard I try. I  typically worry whether I got enough done, or more importantly if I got the right things done before leaving for vacation. I have a very hard time turning off the drip, drip, drip of work-think, often coming up with things to think about just before I go to bed, or in the middle of the night when the cats move around, changing their positions and allowing me the luxury of changing mine.

And then there's my writing, and all of those ideas, and research, draft posts waiting for the right time to pull the trigger -- and I worry, what if the right time doesn't come, or worse, what if it does - will the post really ready, and will it hit the target?

And there's family, my own and my extended; relationships to manage, drama to reign in, and so on. And of course this year, we had the government shutdown to wreak havoc on things.

War Memorial Tower
Mt Greylock, MA

Somehow, even in the face of all that, I managed fairly well to grab freedom by the horns and throw myself into it, to fully enjoy the trip to the Berkshires and the week in Vermont that followed, to deal with things on my own terms and not dwell for long on all that other baggage.

I can still feel and hear and smell our walk on Mt. Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts where, they say, on a clear day you have 60 - 90 mile views. The day we were there, we could barely see six feet in any direction, but it didn't ruin our fun. I smile at enjoying, in the middle of the fog, a fun conversation with a couple from Eastern Massachusetts, who we ran into again later in the day at another stop, the natural bridge and white marble dam in North Adams. Together, we scoffed at the folks who thought there was "no reason to take pictures on such a horrible day". How silly, and short-sighted, that thinking.

Leaving Massachusetts after a couple of days, we wandered into Vermont, where we spent a week travelling up, down, across and diagonally, going to new places and revisiting some areas we had been two years ago just a few weeks after Hurricane Irene. There's been progress in many areas, places where if you were unfamiliar with the lay of the land, you'd have no idea what happened in 2011. You might not think twice about road work, for example, if you didn't know that after Irene, the road being worked on didn't even exist anymore.  On the other hand, you come across places like downtown Brandon, home still to buildings behind barricades, some that had their first floors almost completely washed away when the floodwaters created new paths and changed lives forever.

In places all along Route 100 and several other scenic drives that crisscross Vermont (are there any that aren't scenic, really?), there is scarring along just about every river, brook or stream. It's easy to spot; there are thousands of dead trees, lying grey in the otherwise vibrant Vermont fall. You can see the path the water takes now, versus the path it took before. There are rocks and boulders everywhere, strewn about like marbles in some bizarre game, the rules of which defy comprehension.

And yet, there's a sense of beauty to the damaged landscape. It's not the classic fall foliage beauty, which annually attracts leaf peepers by the busload to New England. Rather, it's a more dramatic beauty, the kind that makes a person smaller in the face of the sheer enormity and power of what created the revised landscape. And it's hard not to appreciate the resilience of what withstood that power, and the sense of glorious freedom and rebellion with which the remaining trees sort of flip the proverbial bird and shake their fists at Mother Nature, defying her, daring her to come back and try again.

It's that same sense of freedom and resilience that causes people to uproot and move there, like the guy who served us a great cup of butternut-apple bisque late one afternoon. Thirty years ago he left Connecticut to go skiing at Sugarbush and basically never went home. He spent the first few years in Burlington, but left when it started to feel too much like what he left behind. He moved to a smaller place in the Randolph area, and makes a living nurturing locals and visitors alike.

Like everyone - native, transplant or tourist - I hope Mother Nature doesn't unleash a force like Irene on Vermont again. And while I don't have any plans to pull up my Central New York stakes and move there, I do know that we'll go back, daring to experience that vacation freedom once again. 

Knowing how well it worked this time, and armed with the memories of a wonderful break from everyday reality, it's a challenge I'll be happy to accept.