Tonight I get in my car with my dog and we drive across the country.
I find myself in the mode in which seven days with no real phone and sporatic internet puts someone like me. Someone with clients and a full-time side job running a blogger network and all the other things that pop into your head before you take off into the wilderness like “don’t forget deoderant” and “like you’ll really need deoderant, D“.
I’m putting in some 15 hours, straight through and right past about a million summer homes, all the way up into the Adirondack Mountains to a little town with little town people and little going on and big, big nature.
My mother has been up at this little lake town nearly every year since she was born, along with her sisters and brothers who now call themselves parents to my hoard of nearly 30 cousins who are now gradually bringing us the next generation.
And so it goes, right?
It’s a magical time and place, this annual reunion of different generations and extended families and visitors and friends and pets and babies. It was great as babies and we complained as we became teens and as we grew up we realized it was the best, most relaxed, most enjoyable, most rewarding week any one of us ever has. Our generation has begun buying their own little cottages all around the spot we’ve come up to year after year, cementing a long future for our yearly gathering.
Our lake respite is fifty foot forest trees standing guard in a stoic stand-the-longest competition with our rickety wood cabins, some nearly a hundred years old. It’s grilling every night, followed by red wine and beer and jokes and debates and plans for tomorrow which could be adjusted depending the weather and depending on whim.
Real books are devoured and workouts are not rushed and our quaint little community beach is for all the time not mentioned so far.
It’s not enough…it’s never enough…but it’s so much more than some are lucky enough to have, and we all realize that. We don’t always know when we get there, but we sure as hell know it when we leave.
I literally can not wait.
I’m considering leaving now and pushing through the night. If it weren’t my first solo roadtrip out there, me trying to be as smart as I can about my energy, well, I’d be writing this in my head right now.
So maybe I’ll just jet when I hit publish.
Either way…I’m out of here.
Tell me about your extended family. Say just the nice things.
Image by Frazzled Jen
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