Inland, Dreaming of Waves

Trips and traps

Twice this summer I’ve traveled—and twice the landscape has called to me so strongly I wanted to stay and explore it. The first time was in California in June, when we drove up and down the state from Glendale to San Luis Obispo to San Diego and back. After living in Colorado for 18 years, I’m a sucker for vegetation, and California was thick with it.

The second time was last weekend, when Todd and I attended a wedding in the Finger Lakes region of New York, between Rochester and Syracuse. It was as if I’d been transported home to the Midwest, except the lakes were much larger and longer and deeper. Hmm, larger and longer and deeper…

Excuse me.

Did I mention we went to a wildlife refuge?

Some other highlights of the trip:

the handfasting ceremony
Chelsea playing volleyball and working on a car in her wedding dress
the spiders building webs on top of webs in the railing outside our room at Taughannock Farms Inn (I recommend it, the inn, that is)
Swimming out to the dock in Cayuga Lake (it’s been a long time since I swam in a lake, and it was difficult to swim into the waves)
Walking into the woods to bird early one morning and enjoying the eerie stillness—until the disco music and announcements from the triathlon started.

When we drove home from DIA, I mourned how flat and barren the prairie looked. I began to understand why it had been called the Great American Desert. And then it began to open itself to me, showing its bushes and trees and gullies with nearly dried-up streams.

I’m not sure that much mystery is a good thing.

posted by Price of Silence @ 10:14 AM