the journey

When you ask someone how much they like getting to wherever they're going, opinions vary. Most come down on the negative side, at best tolerating the "hassles" of travel. Few really look forward to the day in transit.

Me, like in so many other realms of life, I'm a fair weather traveler. (And a fair weather camper, hiker, skier -- the list is long.) If there are storms, issues, missed connections (or, like one December, snowstorms that paralyzed travel for days, or in March, when the plane had to turn around in the middle of an ocean crossing, or like... okay okay, that list is long too!), then I slip into some internal bubble of music and reading and tune out the whole journey until I'm up and moving again.

But I am always excited the morning of departure. You have to treat that in the context of my general excitement about life in the mornings, but really, on travel days, I am a whole other level of excitement.

Still, there is a bittersweet aura to this particular morning, because I'm flying into a place that Ed and I love visiting together and, too, the morning at the farmette is especially brilliant.

We eat breakfast in the midst of bridsong, with peaches and berries from the garden filling our morning bowls at the porch table...






And though the flowers have passed their most glorious and stunning moment, they are as we all our at a certain point in life -- beautiful despite the imperfections.






We inspect our new orchard and vegetable garden. The corn is monstrously tall! Harvest should begin here just as I come back.






And as I am about to zip up my little tote and get going, I'll leave you, or, truthfully, me with a photo of a guy who with infinite patience, tolerates the camera at every single breakfast of our life together. Except for the next ten days, when he will surely breathe a sigh of relief and eat his cereal in the quiet of a cameraless morning.