Taking a moment to breath

I had a whole blog post written and it even smelled smoky (I typed it a couple of weeks ago while campfire-side and under starry, starry skies).  You can just trust me on that.  I saved it, really and truly, but it’s no longer there.  In summary: Camping is great, big wide open starry skies are greater, and saying yes to a few days of breathing is greaty great. 

We are (or more accurately, I am) a bit of a wimp as far as pushing the girls too much and too far for vacations.  Days of driving – no bueno and no thank you.  That was not my family’s style when I was growing up and I see little purpose in it now.  Get me there quick and then let me be there is a legitimate traveling motto.  The boy doesn’t believe in dropping big coin on plane tickets for us to fly (and, frankly, I get that), so we’re always looking for new, interesting, wistfully beachy locations.  And they’ve been good trips all.  So now we’re exploring a bit further and a bit further.  Fate would have it that my brother moved a little over 6 hours away this past winter, so that was easy summer vacation planning.  (For the record, when I say “a little over 6 hours away,” that really means “It took us around 8 hours to get there.”  That’s always fun.) 

So we did a little bit of camping and a little bit of visiting and had pretty great weather all the live long while.  We want camping three times as a fam this summer (the boy took the girls one more time for his annual daddy-daughter camping trip) and never a raindrop was shed upon us.  That’s some good camping ju ju.  There were s’mores.  There was the we-forgot-the-roasting-forks-so-let’s-use-these-long-sticks-that-I-found-in-the-woods moment.  This was also subsequently followed by the oops-the-stick-is-on-fire-and-I-dropped-my-sausage-in-the-fire moment.  There were hikes, complete with 200-foot sheer drops and beautiful waterfalls and whispering caves.  There were turkeys along the road and snakes in the road.  There was a lot of breathing.

Folks, I forget to breath deeply when all the days get going rapid rapid rapid, and that’s truly one of my favorite feelings – a good, deep breath.  There’s something pretty great about inhaling some air and just letting it fill you top to tips and giving some of it (but only some) back for someone else.  It’s free and readily available, and it never feels better or worse depending on the surroundings.  It always feels GREAT. 

There wasn’t a day in the 7 weeks and 5 days between graduation and the first day back when I didn’t intend to sit down with a book for a while but then found myself having never done that by the end of the day.  Not a SINGLE day all summer.  Instead, there were always games to play, muffins to bake, grading to complete (I taught 2 classes this summer), bedrooms to paint, and miles to run.  When something satisfying like reading feels extravagant and time wasting, a BIG DEEP BREATH is the ticket.  It is not a stop but rather a soul satisfying pause.