To illustrate contrast, for the last few nights I have been reading to Shawn from Little House on the Prairie. At first he didn't want me to read it but once I got him to listen to the first chapter he was hooked. All he needed was to hear a few stories about grandfathers and black panthers and how Ma slapped the bear, thinking it was the cow, and how Pa had to hunt so they could survive the long winters.
Sometimes I can't help but long for a simpler time when a trip involved making sure the horses were fed and watered, packing a wagon or sleigh with a picnic and a few small bags, and leaving when people were good and ready, on their time, moving at a slow pace where they could enjoy the beauty of nature. Because only maybe twenty miles away was a whole other world of different people that had rarely, if ever, been seen.
But "it is 2011 Mom," as Annabel told me last year, and I do love the magic of jumping on a plane, having time pass, and being somewhere totally different, and very far away, all in one day. Not to mention traveling to foreign places.
But secretly, between you and me, I would also love traveling at a slower pace by covered wagon.
1 comment:
A slower pace -- absolutely; in a covered wagon -- perhaps not so much. Can't imagine the hardships.
Maybe they'll be saying that about us and having to be patted down, x-rayed, and shoeless in a few hundred years.
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