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After eight days on the west coast, I am back in my own home, here in Snowstorm region. We had a great week, putting over 1400 miles on the rental car, starting in the northwest and travelling south along the coast. Because I had my kids and husband with me, I didn't plan any blogger meet-ups (we didn’t even bring extras on this vacation because it was supposed to be concentrated family time), but every time I looked at the map, I would say to my kids, "Oh, a cool blogger lives here." It’s funny how many town names would seem familiar to me – and then I’d realize that I’d seen them on my sitemeter. I loved seeing the beautiful part of the country where some of my readers and favorite bloggers live.

At one point, I said to my kids, "You know, I could take a summer sometime and just plan a roadtrip around blogger meet-ups. I’ve got enough blogging friends scattered about to make that a really cool trip."

Boy in Black said, "You’re going to take a trip by yourself and stay with strangers you’ve met on the internet? Aren't you supposed to warn your kids about that kind of a thing?"

Oh, yeah.

But still, it's tempting.

This was a different kind of vacation for my family. We usually drive to someplace and camp for a week, spending all of our time in one place. Last week, we travelled every day, seeing a new landscape every couple of hours. My spouse had six free flights saved up from getting bumped so often, which is what made the trip possible, and it’s the only time the six of us have ever flown anywhere together. The downside was that flying killed a day on either end of the trip, especially since our layover both times was in Southern City that is the Same Age as Scarlett O'Hara, a city that apparently has thunderstorms any time someone from the northeast flies through, which meant that we spend a considerable amount of time sitting around in a not very exciting airport.

I hadn't planned to do any vacation blogging, but since my body stayed on east coast time the whole week, I found myself waking up early, with time to write a blog post before the rest of my family woke up. And it was surprisingly easy to find free wireless. If we wanted to look up directions to a state park on my laptop or someone in the family wanted to check their email, we'd just pull into a parking lot somewhere and I could almost always pick up a signal.

When we got home and I started reading blogs to see what had been going on when I was gone, I realized that I had driven right by the BlogHer conference. It's a good thing I didn't realize this until we were home, because I might have been tempted to desert my family to go meet some really cool bloggers. And that's hardly the right attitude for a family vacation.

Vacation blog: the coast

Although we journeyed inland several times to see waterfalls, caves, rare plants, tall trees, and a deep blue lake, we’ve spent most of our week moving south along the coast, stopping to stare down at the waves from far above or to hike down to a rocky beach or sandy cove. The weather kept changing, sometime a fog so thick we could barely see the rocks and waves, and the next minute, sunshine so bright that we stripped off clothing to feel the heat against our skin.



With-a-Why looking at rocks on the first morning of our trip.

The mood inside the rental car was equally quick to change as we argued and negotiated about where to go and what to do next, trying to accommodate six different people of different ages and interests. We stopped in a city with a famous orange bridge that was completely obscured by fog to eat lunch and gaze at a prison island that is apparently featured on some skateboarding video game my kids have played. We drove down the crookedest street in the world, looked at the boats in the harbor, and watched street performers. Boy in Black liked the beat-box artist who sat with a microphone outside a cafe while With-a-Why’s favorite was the man who hid behind tree branches and jumped out to scare people walking past. My daughter insisted that we needed to bring back presents for our extras so we spent one afternoon wandering through the shops of a coastal town, weaving our way underneath the yellow and green umbrellas and bright red awnings of outdoor cafes and past kiosks filled with cut flowers for sale.

But no matter what we did, we kept returning to the coast. And always, when I saw the ocean, I wanted to get near enough to smell the moist wind, hear the waves crashing, and feel the rush of water against my ankles. At every vista point, every dirt road, every place we could possibly park the rental car, I tried to convince my family that we needed to stop and explore. In one harbor, we saw seals and otters playing in the water. In another cove, we climbed down to the beach to find a wedding taking place, a whole group of men in ironed shirts and women in dresses that blew in the wind, a cluster of formally dressed people, most of whom had trouble climbing out of the cove because their footwear was totally inappropriate for hiking. In some coves we found surfers, all clad in black, bobbing in the water as they waited for the next big wave.

But at many of the beaches, especially on the mornings of deep fog, we were the only people for miles, free to wade in the water, listen to waves smashing against rock, run through the surf, nap in the sand, or simply sit and stare out at the ocean.



My daughter walking the beach on the last day of our trip.

Vacation Blog: Big trees

When my kids were young, I used to tell them bedtime stories in which we would pretend we had shrunk to a tiny size and we’d explore the house, seeing how different things felt when everything in the house was much bigger. This week, as we walked through groves of ancient redwoods, I felt like I was in one of my own stories. Or perhaps a movie set. The landscape seemed unreal: trees reaching hundreds of feet into the sky, and logs on the ground that were higher than my head. We walked through clumps of lush green ferns that were huge compared to the ones back at home.

Coast redwoods are the world’s tallest living trees. One tree can weigh more than 500 tons, with foot-thick bark that protects it from fire and insects, and some redwoods have reached more than 360 feet in height. When I looked up at the trees I walked underneath, I simply could not see the tops. More impressive than the height to me, though, was the age of the trees we saw. A coast redwood might live to be two thousand years old.

The woods were softly lit with sunlight that had been filtered through a canopy far above our heads. I could see how so many writers have compared the redwood forests to a cathedral, or any space designed to make humans feel humble and reverent. I tried to imagine what it would be like to grow in the same spot, season after season, for more than a thousand years.

Walking through the redwood forest made me feel all reflective and spiritual, but With-a-Why saw place as a huge playground. He was off and running down the soft trails, climbing up onto huge logs to race along the top, ducking behind big trees, and hiding inside hollow trees. For someone his size, the forest offered many places to hide and jump out at family members as they walked by. The ancient trees seemed to stir up all his pent-up energy, inviting him to run and play until his hair was sweaty and his face flushed. When I asked him the last night what his favorite part of the trip so far was, he said, "The redwoods."

Vacation Blog: Chilling

When the blazing sun made it too hot for a comfortable hike, we did the logical thing: we went underground.

The cave we visited was set aside as a national monument in 1909. It's a cave of gorgeous marble rocks, with formations carved by running water, with stalactites and stalagmites that formed over thousands of years. Chilly air rushed across my skin as we entered this dim underground environment to spend an hour and a half ducking under rocks and staring at fantastic shapes. The forest ranger who was our guide talked knowledgeably about geology and hydrology, while my teenage sons entertained each other with whispered comments about the phallic shapes they were seeing.

With-a-Why was fascinated by the water dripping from the roof of the cave. "I keep getting kissed!" he kept saying, as a drop would hit his face.

The temperature in the cave stays at 42 degrees Farenheit year around. It's been that way for ... well, since anyone human ever began recording temperatures in the cave. Except recently, it's changed. Over the last ten years, in response to global warming, the temperature in the cave has gone up a degree. As we stumbled out of the cave, relieved to be able to stand up straight, stepping up out of the dark and cold into a gorgeous remnant of an old-growth coniferous forest, I couldn't help thinking about this chilling fact and wondering how many of the beautiful places we've seen on this trip would still be there for my grandchildren.

Vacation Blog: Deep Blue

Yesterday, I saw the bluest lake I have ever seen.

My teenagers had been teasing me all week about how I was probably going to cry when I saw the lake. I'd made the mistake of telling them that my friend Plantswoman had cried the first time she finally saw this lake, a body of water many consider sacred, and that anecdote had caused them to roll their eyes and tease me mercilessly. In reality, my fear of heights helped prevent the tears. Watching my kids walk perilously close to the edge of sheer cliffs always makes me feel like screaming rather than crying.

It's the deepest lake in the country, more than 1930 feet deep. We gazed it from far above, admiring the way it is set into a rim of cliffs below a gorgeous summer sky. The brilliant sun kept changing the blueness of the lake, which reflected the moving clouds and the hemlock, fir, and pines that clustered at the edge.

Temperatures rose to the 90s, so we were thankful for the conifers that shaded many of the trails and lookout points. Perhaps most amazing were the patches of snow we found on the hills around the lake: how strange to be able to have a snowball fight on a sweltering hot summer day. Shaggy Hair Boy climbed up one snowy patch to come sliding down in his best snowboarding style, slipping right out of his sandals and getting himself soaking wet.

The lake is a six-mile wide caldera created by the eruption and collapse of a volcano almost 7,000 years ago. Lava flows sealed the bottom of the volcanic basin, allowing water from rainfall and snowmelt to fill it and form the lake. The island in the lake is a cinder cone that arose after the eruption.

I knew the unusual geological history of the lake, but nothing had prepared me for the blue colour that kept changing and deepening as the sun moved across the sky. I don’t think I could ever get tired of looking at it. But after hours of moving around the lake, gazing at the blue water from every possible angle, Boy in Black finally said, "Yeah, it’s beautiful, but how many times can we look at it?"

That's when I pulled myself away from the hypnotic blue of the lake to see that my husband and kids were tired, hungry, and hot. They had eaten all of the snack food and fruit, drunk all the water and juice. It was time to drive back to town for some food and a good night’s sleep.

But even as I closed my eyes that night, I could still see that shimmering blue.

Vacation Blog: Exploring

Yesterday, we explored part of the country that my spouse and children have never seen before. We saw tall cliffs, historic lighthouses, and beaches tucked into little coves. On one rocky beach, we listened to the rattling noise the waves made as they shifted piles of rounded rocks back and forth. We climbed down to ledges to feel the spray of waves as they came crashing against rock. We saw sea lions lying in the sun and listened to their characteristic bark – and then drove inland to see the darlingtonia, a lovely translucent green plant that lures insects to a murky death.



I find it hard to resist any beach, hiking trail, or scenic vista – but after a whole morning of stopping every mile, the teenagers began complaining that it might be nice to stay in the car for more than a few minutes at a time. They were still protesting that I had gotten them up at dawn, even though I kept explaining that it should not have felt like dawn because our bodies were still on east coast time. Spouse pulled out his secret weapon, a CD that contained everything from Barry Manilow to David Cassidy, and tortured the teenagers with sappy seventies music until they were begging to stop and get out of the car again.

And once out of the car, they could not resist exploring yet another combination of rock and water.



With-a-Why and Boy in Black go off exploring.

Just the six of us

No Friday poetry this week. No Friday memes. No time for blogging.

We are off on another vacation, eager to escape the hot, humid weather of Snowstorm region. This adventure will be for just the six of us – no other relatives, no extra kids, just the six of us together for ten days. We will spend the time talking, exploring part of the country we’ve never seen before, and fighting over what music to play in the car.

Every year, I say, "This might be the last time we can do this kind of vacation, all of us together." My Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter is twenty. Boy in Black is eighteen. Shaggy Hair is a teenager, and even With-a-Why is no longer a baby.

So I will savor these moments while they last – the teasing and joking, the disagreements over where to go next, the eye rolling that I get when I try to make things educational, the frequent stops to find food or bathrooms, the talking and singing and playing games, the laughing over inside jokes, and the long conversations that Spouse and I have in the front seat while our children sleep in the back of the car, safe and in our care as we travel down the highway together.

Afternoon in the Art Park

It's a place where the wild and the pastoral mix, where nature and art get intertwined, where both naturalists and artists gather. An outdoor sculpture park. Not a neat managed garden, but acres and acres of open rural land, with pockets of woods and wetlands -- and ponds built decades ago, each pond evolving into something different than it began. The art park spreads across a hilltop, with panoramic views that look, as my friend Poet Woman says, "the way Tuscany looks in romantic movies." Miles of trails lead visitors to ambitious art installations, art created by hands and weathered by wind and rain.

Poet Woman and I only had an hour to spare on our way to the poetry reading in Little Town by Lake, but an hour in the art park would be an hour well spent. Within minutes, we were wandering along the trails, talking busily and running to check out art installations we could see from a distance. Poet Woman is a naturalist who identified plants and creatures as we walked along; thanks to a degree in science and years of working at a science museum, she knows all kinds of vital things about the natural world.

I am always getting yelled at for touching things in art museums. It’s so hard to resist! So I love art that I am allowed to touch. I like running my hands over sun-warmed metal or weathered china or solid clay. I love sculptures that invite the viewer to enter. As I climbed through lattices or under metal girders or crawled into a nest made of twisted branches, I could hear Poet Woman’s camera clicking, and I knew that my body, my image, had become part of the work.

The sky, which ranged from deep blue in the east to an angry grey in the west as a storm approached, became a changing backdrop to some of the dramatic sculptures. Sunlight kept changing the way each piece looked as late afternoon turned to evening. The welcome wind moved across the landscape, sending ripples through a whole field of timothy. Perhaps the artwork in the park made me more conscious of these changes in colour and light, these nuances of movement, just as the presence of Poet Woman and her scientific explanations made me think more carefully about the ecology of the place.

One art installation looked like a huge clay ear, about the size of my living room. Poet Woman talked about a poetry performance she gave once, standing on the earth ear, reading her poetry to her audience and into the ear. Musicians, dancers, and poets have all done performances here in this park: science teachers bring school children here as well. As we sat on the clay sculpture, talking, she stopped to identify bird calls. A redwing blackbird in the tree next to us kept trilling his call throughout our conversation.

We had the whole park – miles of trails and acres of land – to ourselves, and we soon discovered why. The recent rains had nourished the local population of mosquitoes, who seemed thrilled at our bare legs and arms, our sweaty hair and faces. I am sure that most of Poet Woman’s photos show me slapping at insects. Thank goodness she had no audio equipment with her.

We ran from the lovely little pond, with its calm surface that reflected back our own faces, ran from the cool installations in the deep woods that made me think of grape vine arbors, ran from anything wet and shaded. Upward, we hurried, following a mown trail up a sunny ripening field, climbing to the top of a hill that promised a panoramic view. At the top, we were able to stand still in a strong breeze that kept the insects away, gazing at the woods and meadows below us and the far-off little town on the lake, with the white steeple of the church rising above treetops.

We talked about our plans to return for a whole day, perhaps in the fall after the frost kills off the insect population, bringing our lunches and our journals. We’ll watch the way the seasons change the landscape. Poet Woman will identify flora and fauna. We’ll write, we’ll do reiki, we’ll climb into works of art. We’ll watch the chorophyll disappear from the leaves, disintegrating in the bright sun and cold air, allowing the carotene and anthocyanins to reveal the yellows and reds of autumn.

Splash

Summer mornings at camp, I wake up in my small tent to the sound of birdsong. The acres and acres of preserved wetlands to our west are matched by acres and acres of farmland to our east, and the birdcalls from the marsh mix with the piercing call of a rooster, who crows again and again. Nights are almost always cool at camp, but the morning sunshine warms the tent. Sunlight pouring in through nylon walls gets everyone up pretty early, even the teenagers.

Breakfast is eaten in shifts as people stumble out of tents. A few people at a time will gather in my parents’ tiny cabin, where my mother sometimes makes blueberry pancakes over a propane flame, three pancakes at a time in a cast iron frying pan. No one talks much in the morning besides the usual greeting, “Good morning,” and “How did you sleep?”

Anything that happened during the night is recounted – thunderstorms, boats going by in the channel, the call of the great horned owl. Since I am a sound sleeper, I rarely can contribute to the conversation as I grab a bowl of cereal and some soy milk. The teenagers exchange inside jokes about all that went on in their tent as they devour pancakes or cereal. My kids are always still wearing whatever t-shirts they had on the day before, with their hair sticking in all directions. Blonde Sister’s girls, who have that silky hair that always looks perfect, manage to look neat and clean even when camping.

My father, who is obnoxiously cheerful in the morning, will try to get everyone to make plans for the day. "What island should we go to today?" He is largely ignored by the rest of the family, none of whom have inherited his cheerful morning attitude and who prefer to skulk about silently until they are fully awake.

Our dock, surrounded by cattails and shaded by oak trees, is a fairly private place for washing up in the morning. If you get a quiet moment before the dogs start jumping in and stirring up the muck, the water will be calm and clear. A quick swim or a splash of cool water on the face wakes up even the sleepiest camper.



Urban Sophisticate Sister washes her face at the end of the dock.

By its cover

My kids all seem to have the ability to focus intently on one task, even in the midst of a crowded room. Perhaps it's a survival instinct, nurtured by growing up in a chaotic noisy household. Recently, I've noticed that my youngest son, With-a-Why, in the midst of the living room full of kids playing poker and blackjack or jamming on their guitars, has been working intently on a folder full of papers, drawing and writing something. And he keeps asking for newly sharpened pencils.

The other day, he asked me, "Want to see my graphic novel?"

A graphic novel? I was curious to see what this would be.

Then he showed me his sheaf of papers. We went through each one by one. He had divided most of the pages into grids, and each little box contained an illustration. In some cases, for emphasis, he used the whole page.

The drawings were simple stick figures, but the novel had a complicated plot that seemed to have its basis in Greek mythology. The narrative was suspenseful, with a new conflict presented just about every new page. The dialogue, suspended in ovals above the stick figures, not only helped the plot progress but served to develop the characters of the stick figures, who seemed to have both distinct personalities and distinct supernatural powers.

I was impressed. With-a-Why seemed pleased with my reaction, giving me one of his rare smiles before he sat down to work on the novel some more.

Later I said to my daughter, "Hey, did you see With-a-Why’s graphic novel?"

She nodded. "Yeah, isn’t it cool?"

Then she laughed. "I told him to call it a graphic novel. I figured that no one would take him seriously if he said he was making a comic book."