LAS CRUCES – The options I’ve been offered this year include
a trip to the Scottish highlands and Norwegian fiords (some of our family’s ancestral
homelands) with my sister.
Then there are possible trips to visit relatives in the
Pacific Northwest and assorted sites in Florida and Michigan.
I have friends who’ve graciously said they’d love to have me
visit them in Utah, New York City, Jamaica and Germany.
Other dear buddies would like to plan trips to San Miguel de
Allende and/or Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. A high school amigo has invited all
his classmates to an exotic coastal resort he’s built in Mexico.
And some of us have been talking about bucket list
expeditions to the Galapagos Islands, New Zealand, Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji and Greece.
We’ve been discussing those journeys for so long, in fact, that most of them
have long since gone, brought me the T-shirts and even made return trips to our
dream destinations.
But the truth is, since I arrived here in the mid-1990s,
I’ve only made it out of the state a handful of times, and usually in the line
of duty (a work-related trip with a Las Cruces Sister Cities delegation to
Germany) or on fond grandparent migrations to meet up with Alexander the Great
in southern California and Idaho.
In fact, my grandson, at 19, is considerably more
well-traveled than I was at that age and is often willing to spare me a trip to
his current residence by flying in from wherever he is to visit me in his
former Las Cruces stamping grounds.
When I think about it, ever since I left Michigan, friends
and relatives have been more than willing to spare me the trip and make the
effort to visit me in the considerably more exotic (at least to native
Michiganders) places I’ve settled since. New York, Connecticut, Oregon, Santa
Fe, Jamaica and Florida can all be potent lures, I’ve learned. During long
Midwestern winters, the company of those of us in tropical and warm southern
climes seems to be particularly attractive to long-lost friends and kinfolk.
I’ve made plans several times, as recently as last year,
when a long-planned trip to see friends in another state was preempted at the
last minute for their trip to visit a new grandchild on the other coast.
That happens a lot as you get older, when many of your
friends are retired and you’re not, and they get tired of waiting for you to
come out and play with them. But there’s a bright side, too. Without the bother
of having to plan an itinerary, book a flight or buy new tires, I’ve enjoyed a
lot of fun visits and reunions in recent years. A surprising number of loved
ones eventually find their way to my door, on side trips, or RV marathon treks,
or quests for interesting places to relocate or spend a more comfortable season
or two.
The truth is, I’ve already been blessed with opportunities
to see, visit and best of all, spend extended periods living in, some of
Earth’s most interesting and beautiful places. And my life is filled with
well-traveled, articulate adventurers, from my long-touring musician son to
globe-trotting physician soulmate Roger and photographer BFF Cecilia. They’ve
all shared anecdotes and souvenirs and sometimes, their far-flung friends and
colleagues, who have come to visit me, too. I feel as though I have been many
of the places they’ve been.
Maybe this will be the year that I’ll abandon my recent
preference for staycations and again be tempted to heed Kurt Vonnegut’s poetic admonition:
“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”
I may grumble now and then about missing great bodies of
water, and there are times I long to walk on the shores of Lake Michigan, or
explore tide pools on the Oregon Coast, or spend another morning ambling for
miles with my sister and her enthusiastic big dog in the warm Atlantic waters
of Bathtub Beach in South Florida.
But then I remember the beach tar and oil spills and
heart-breaking dead and dying marine mammals. And what a hassle it is, as my
son once put it, “to put your body in a big metal tube and get hurled through
space.”
And I give thanks that I get to spend my days land-locked in
my favorite state, in my favorite place on the planet, where a surprisingly
large number of the most interesting people on Earth already live, or manage to
find their way here, more frequently that you might expect.
S. Derrickson Moore may be
reached at 575-541-5450, dmoore@lcsun-news.com or @derricksonmoore on Twitter.
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