T is for Travel

Skagway, Alaska
Photo Credit: Doree Weller

On a regular basis, I’m happiest at home, but I do like to travel to break me out of the rut.  I like doing new things and seeing new places.  I feel like it wakes my brain up and makes me more creative.  When I go somewhere, I try to immerse myself in the experience, which can be difficult for me, as my default setting is, “Please don’t talk to me.”

It’s not that I hate people; it’s just that I mostly prefer my own company.  I like to read and I like to make up stories about people.  When people do inevitably talk to me (I have no idea why; I’m told I appear standoffish), I do enjoy hearing their stories.

My favorite thing about traveling is to see new scenery.  I love landscapes and skies, trees and water.  I love taking pictures of beautiful places, interesting buildings, and things that are broken and decaying.  I love pictures of animals and paths.    I love to look around at everything.  I know I look like a tourist, but I don’t care.

Travel takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary.  I remember the first time I went to Arizona to visit, I was enamored with how huge the sky way.  There was just so much of it, stretching in every direction.  Before going there, I never knew you could see so much sky at one time.  After 7 years of seeing it, I became numb to it.  I no longer looked up in wonder every time I went outside.  But then I traveled to Texas, and there were trees!  Everywhere!  I had grown up in Pennsylvania, so trees weren’t new to me, but after 7 years of no trees, they were new and exciting again.  My eyes had missed the green.

Travel helps me to appreciate what I have, and to enjoy different things.  While I admire people who do lots of traveling or do exciting things like backpack through Europe, it’s not for me.  After a week being somewhere else, I’m ready to come home.  Like Dorothy, I believe there’s no place like home.

First Love Blogfest

Welcome to the First Loves Blogfest.  I get to talk about my first loves in the following categories: music, movie, book, and person.  Some of these are easier than others for me, but they all bring back good memories.

Person

My first great love was Richard.  We must have looked ridiculous together, as he was about 6’4″ and I was 5’0″ (then and now).  He was much more popular than I was, but it seemed to work as we were together for two years, and in high school, that’s like a century.  Different interests, different approaches to life eventually made us drift apart, but I’ve never forgotten him, and I hope that wherever life took him, he’s doing well.  I recently found our old love letters, and though there’s nothing to make me blush in them,  they were still nice to find.

Music

My first great music love was the Beatles.  Before that, I casually liked different music and songs, but nothing grabbed me.  It all started with “Hey Jude.”  I’m sure I heard it on the radio many times before the first time I really heard it.  After that, I started buying tapes and CDs.  I fell in love with Revolver, Rubber Soul, and Sergeant Pepper.  It would be several more years before I’d appreciate Abby Road and the White Album.  To this day, there’s nothing better than a Beatles song for me.

Book

This may be the hardest of the bunch for me, because I’m not sure I could pick just one!    If I were forced to choose, at gunpoint maybe, I’d probably choose Watchers, by Dean Koontz.  It’s my all time favorite book overall, and I think I read it for the first time when I was around 12.  Around the same time, I also read Watership Down, by Richard Adams, so that may have been my first beloved book.  Or, it could have been Jack and Jill by Louisa May Alcott.  Ha!  I talked about more than one book after all.

Movie

The first movie I remember really loving was The Wizard of Oz.  I loved all the songs and wished that I had a friend like The Scarecrow.  I can’t tell you how many times I asked my mom, “So was it a dream or was it real?”  Later, after I read the book by L. Frank Baum, I remember pointing out how different the movie was and being irritated that in the movie, they imply that it could have been a dream by incorporating people into Oz from her real life.  I still liked the movie after watching the book, but it wasn’t the same.

So, that’s all, folks.  These are my four first loves.  If you haven’t participated in the blogfest, I’d still love to hear about your “firsts” in comments.