Summer Vacation

Having just returned from three very different vacations practically back to back, I am feeling rested, invigorated and inspired. Yet, it makes me ask the questions.

Did pioneers need vacations to “get away from the farm?” Could they in fact take vacations? And if they did, who watched the farm?

My first getaway was to the San Francisco Bay area where I feasted on fabulous friendships and panoramic views. As I truly did leave my heart in San Francisco. Flying into the Bay area I am always surprised at the landscape as the plane hurled across the San Joaquin Valley, truly the big valley. The giant lush irrigated valley produces more than 10% of the food consumed in the United States. It seems to go forever and then abruptly ends at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Crossing the Sierras, brown and barren, give way to the massively populated peninsula known as the Bay Area. The development emerges past the mountains and like the valley seems endless.

The second trip involved family and a wedding. I traveled back to my mid western roots to the farmlands of Northern Ohio just south of Cleveland. Out the window of the plane I saw neat and tidy, brown and green patchwork of endless farmland. The corn was knee high and the tomatoes still small and green. I was disappointed that the wedding was in early summer and not late August when the harvest is plentiful. My summers as a youth were spent eating thick slices of beefsteak tomatoes sprinkled with salt, fresh picked corn on the cob and juicy watermelon. Spending days with cousins around Granny's kitchen table crunching potato chips and drinking Pepsi from glass bottles and spending nights in a trailer at the Lorain County Fair while my cousins showed horses and shoveled horse manure.

I returned just a few days ago from the last part of this three-legged adventure from New Mexico, an Enchanted Land of Spirit and Sky. Having spent a week at a yoga camp for women, submerged in practice and meditation, renewing my spirit and inspiring my life, I have returned to my small backyard garden. Relieved that the hurricane rains and some very helpful friends sustained my vegetable garden while I was away. I sit happily munching on cucumbers in the hot Texas heat.

As a part time pioneer, I have the luxury of growing what I can and if I am not successful, driving to the store or farmer's market where someone else has done a better job. My life is not dependent on my harvest and I have the freedom that in a day's time I can travel to another geographic region and find pleasure in those surroundings. Truly the best of both worlds, content and grateful, all at the same time.