Reasons to Travel #2

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” - G. K. Chesterton

When we landed in Oakland it might as well have been the moon. From the plane I had looked down on the brown California hills and after the lush greenness that threatens to overcome every road in the East they appeared to me, like the moon to Buzz Aldrin, a magnificent desolation.

On the drive home West Oakland's decrepit buildings leaped out at me. At home I could smell our home's smell, and see the high cobwebs, and Greta's pencil marks on the wall. It seemed to me that someone had moved the center island in the kitchen.

But also my morning cappuccino was delicious beyond all hope or memory. Before we even had time to get used to home we were off to camp on the coast just an hour's drive north. A friend who has been going there many years invited us. We almost did not go. But I thought about my resolve to cast off the bowlines and sail into the unknown.

I've lived in the Bay Area so long, 24 years, and yet this place was terra incognita for me. How could I have let it remain so for so long?

I suppose I just started to think that everywhere here was like everywhere else.

On our trip many of the people we met and stayed with said we were going places that they had never been. Of course. We all develop channels we flow in, habits we're comfortable with. It is hard to see them as ruts when we are flowing in them happily.

So despite being tired from our journey we set off to camp at a place so close we had overlooked it and there we found many things strange and wondrous to behold. The scrubby hills that seemed so desolate were teeming with life. Bunnies and gopher snakes and swallows that swooped along the paths to the campsites so that we surprised each other.

And though we made friends with the rocks and earth...

...I hope to preserve the feeling that all around us is terra incognita.