Many Christmases ago, Santa Claus left me a light-up Oreo yo-yo in my stocking. Unlike the cheap Duncan yoyos we were used to, the extra ballast of the batteries inside made the Oreo yoyo stable enough to perform simple tricks like 'walk the dog' and not turn into a twisting snarled confusion
But even the amazing light up yo-yo couldn’t make it “around the world”.
And neither have I. Certified road warriors that we are, our travels have tallied thousands upon thousands of miles on highways both blue and red, multi lane thoroughfares and the kind of two lanes that dwindle down until they truly become “lost highways”....because you’re truly lost. When I was a kid, I-80 was a four lane gravel road through the empty middle of Wyoming. Some of our family vacations took us so far down the “scenic” routes that the navigator (me) found herself fixated on the gas gauge, not the landscape. At least one I-70 entanglement was untied by exiting onto a cliff hanging byway that was definitely a road less traveled over the Rockies, even in our 4wd Dodge Ram. Rental cars have borne the brunt of the inappropriate match between road and vehicle: we were grateful when the 25’ Lincoln assigned to us in Reno (we looked like high rollers?) plowed through the snow in the Sierras without stranding us in the chain zone. And we crossed our fingers when the Buick we drove in Glacier didn’t high center on a boulder when we took a different...and less maintained Forest Service road...back to civilization one evening after dark.
Being lost in the dark is one kind of thrill...not the best kind. It doesn’t hold a candle to waking during an overnight flight to Europe to look down and see boundless snow and ice and realize you are high above the top of the world, a place you’ve never seen before and will never set foot on. The same feeling of insignificance attaches as you spend sleepless hours over the miles of ocean waves between the US mainland and Hawaii watching the little jet creep across the arc of the map on the monitor….Whether the end of your flight is Oahu (4800 miles from Tarkio) or Dublin(3400 miles), the green islands rising from the ocean are a welcome sight.
Cruising is both stranger and more familiar. Without the reference points of shore, a day at sea sends me scurrying to the big map to find our place in the world. On the other hand, your ship is your world and a routine of leisure, no more, no less, is what’s available.
Ah, but embark in a foreign land from either airship or cruise ship and the real adventure of travel unfolds. Because it is not just distance from home that makes a trip travel, it is the distance in time. Living in a small town, working on the prairie, where man’s works are constantly under siege by wind, by dust, by the seesaw whiplash of heat and cold and the continental climate, a person lives in recognition of how tenuous are our works upon the earth.
In Ireland, though, our very first stop was the Newgrange Passage Tomb, a man made mound surrounded by white quartz rocks with a passageway constructed especially to catch the rays of the rising sun on the winter solstice. This immense undertaking was constructed by ancient man 3500 years ago. When we traveled to Europe, I felt the awe I have for Mt. Rainier or Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon: a feeling for the immensity of time, like the bulk of an iceberg, except that weight is human history. Excavations in Greece, cathedrals in Italy, relics in Ireland, all left by unnamed human hands like mine.
Technology has made it easier...indeed, even possible, for an ordinary person to travel untold miles in space and visit wonders unimaginable. But we have not yet mastered the chasm of time; even the most learned of men must play a guessing game with the clues those before us left behind. Our little trips span more than 10,000 miles point to point...and don't we hope to add to that tally! But even if we do, it will leave less than a scuff on the surface of time's story.....
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