This month, my husband and I spent ten days on holiday in California, visiting our son, getting an awards (my husband, that is), and soaking in beauty of all sorts. On our flight home, I wrote down some reminders to myself and thought later that I should share them with you.
The world is bigger and wilder than I often think. I imagined the sequoias to be five minutes inside the park.* I didn’t imagine the folds of LA canyons.
There’s so much glorious natural diversity in this world
Follow what catches your imagination
Go lightly in the world
Be flexible: make a plan but flex with it when the road falls into the sea.
Know your limits – the cliffs, the sketchy neighbourhoods, the unmasking
Know your desires
Trust your partner. Be grateful for those in it with you
Try new things – hot pot, tea ceremonies, hot pepper toast, burritos
Go to the local places—The Little Chicken, the Casa Burrito place, the Turkish breakfast café, the pick-your-own ranunculus farm you read about in the local paper
Use what you brought with you – your bike helmet, your poles, your hiking boots
Splurge in the right places (Chez Panisse) and not the wrong ones (Carmel by the Sea)
Push yourself harder than you think, but know your limits
Get onto the local time zone the first day even if it hurts
Make littlewhile friends sometimes but not always
Listen to books and music set in the local area (We listened to The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler as we drove through and from Los Angeles and then Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore as we entered San Francisco.)
Cut loose
Take the good tours and learn from those who know
Climb the mountain early in the day
Bring good footwear
Have reverence for nature
Be very present
Notice the dandelion in the botanical garden
Soak in the ocean air and smells but know it will never be enough, that you can never capture it
Waste some time
Know when you’re in over your head
Be as cheerful as you can be. Don’t be like cranky dad on the SF streetcar, demanding an outside seat, ordering his children to “Look!” and getting off in a huff
Spend time savouring a trip once it’s done. We ruminate over bad things, but we’re much happier if we reflect on the beautiful ones too.
*Instead we had to rent and carry snow chains as we ascended switchbacks up the mountain for an hour and more than 6000 feet into the High Sierras with their new-fallen two feet of snow, and there weren’t always even lips to the road as we navigated our way up to where the sequoias grow.
Susan Fish 