Making an escape
Summer heat does things to my thinking. The high temperature that hovers in my living room seems to make the walls fold and move into the shape of a shoebox. It's more than just hot; it's stifling. It's impossible to think of anything else other than getting out - making a great escape.
I didn't escape that far this morning. In fact, I only made it as far as my balcony. Sitting in a patch of shade, I took a mental excursion with an old New York Times travel section. The writer wrote a glorious stroy about traveling down the Mississippi River on a refurbished steamboat. There was an enormous picture of the boat on the front page. The photograph featured the riverboat in the evening so the boat's lace-like railings were aglow in lights and river reflected the night's colors. It looked so tranquil. But even more than tranquil, it looked so cool. I wanted to be there with the repoter - buying lemonade from a child's stand in one of the boat's ports-of-call.
Never underestimate the power of a well-written travel peice. When I lived in the South, all I wanted to do was leave. I wanted grey-voilet mountains and dry, dusty wind not green rolling hills and air soaked with humidity.
The food wasn't to my liking and the atomosphere always seemed lukewarm. But after reading that travel peice it dawned on me that maybe I need to see this particular region of the U.S. through a different perspective. There is something exotic about those wide, lazy rivers, those gaint magnolia trees and those dark, dank swamps.
As the sun grew stronger and my patch of shade shrank and the hot, dry wind kicked up, I thought perhaps it's time to start planning an escape down South.
I didn't escape that far this morning. In fact, I only made it as far as my balcony. Sitting in a patch of shade, I took a mental excursion with an old New York Times travel section. The writer wrote a glorious stroy about traveling down the Mississippi River on a refurbished steamboat. There was an enormous picture of the boat on the front page. The photograph featured the riverboat in the evening so the boat's lace-like railings were aglow in lights and river reflected the night's colors. It looked so tranquil. But even more than tranquil, it looked so cool. I wanted to be there with the repoter - buying lemonade from a child's stand in one of the boat's ports-of-call.
Never underestimate the power of a well-written travel peice. When I lived in the South, all I wanted to do was leave. I wanted grey-voilet mountains and dry, dusty wind not green rolling hills and air soaked with humidity.
The food wasn't to my liking and the atomosphere always seemed lukewarm. But after reading that travel peice it dawned on me that maybe I need to see this particular region of the U.S. through a different perspective. There is something exotic about those wide, lazy rivers, those gaint magnolia trees and those dark, dank swamps.
As the sun grew stronger and my patch of shade shrank and the hot, dry wind kicked up, I thought perhaps it's time to start planning an escape down South.
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