A Trip
(Over the next few weeks, Saturday Stories will be about a little vacation we took this year)
We are packed up and ready to head out. It has been a couple of years since we have had the opportunity to take a full blown vacation. M and I have both been looking forward to time away. We’ve gone back and forth about what to do or what direction to head, we settled on heading easterly.
We don’t generally like making plans, reservations and such. It’s better just to go and figure out where that means as you are going. At least that is the way we go about it. But this year we did decide that we had to make at least a few arrangements. Our plan is to camp and looking at various national park campgrounds we realized we might be camping in a Walmart parking lot if we didn’t reserve a spot.
They have “first come first serve” campsites, but we didn’t want to risk being the last come and no serve people.
Our first stop is in the Buffalo River National Park. Just for a night. Time to do some hiking. Then we have a couple of days to meander our way over to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
Some people have an aversion to camping. That’s fine. I have an aversion to Disney Parks.
I had a moment of clarity about this the other day. Most evenings, M and I can be found walking at Claremore Lake. Since she retired, we can eat dinner at a decent hour and still have time for a nice walk – at least until the time change hits. I’m not an ornithologist or even an avid bird watcher, but I like to observe. And there are plenty of birds to observe around the lake. Ducks and geese are abundant, and we often see Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets standing along the shore.
One recent evening, we came across a white goose in obvious distress. It was crying loudly and looking around in every direction. It wasn’t hurt—it just seemed anxious because it was alone. Geese don’t do well by themselves. They’re wired for community, for the safety and comfort of the gaggle.
Herons, though, are different. They stand silently at the water’s edge, still and patient, usually by themselves. Solitude is in their nature.
Both are birds, but they thrive in very different ways. One prefers companionship, the other prefers solitude. Neither tries to convert the other. The geese don’t tell the herons to join a gaggle, and the herons don’t tell the ducks to stand still by themselves. They flourish in the way they were made.
I’ve decided I’m a Heron. It’s not that I don’t want to be around other people, just not too many and not too often. Lines and crowds and noise aren’t my thing. I’m not a goose. That doesn’t make goose people bad. If someone wants to be trapped on a big boat with a few thousand other people for a few days, have at it.
Give me a walk in the woods, a seat by the campfire, and a dark night under the stars.
