Questionable Vacation rest

From July fourth to July seventh I was in my most favorite geographic place, the north woods of Wisconsin. I get nervous when I try to explain why this area ranks above anywhere else because in order to do so, and do it with justice, I need to display a part of myself that few see: the mystic, connected to Mother Earth, all of a sudden I have an extra sense person. It goes something like this: Every time I come up here time stops. Every time I come up here I feel closer to nature. While I am here I feel truer to myself and the insignificant pressures of daily life are simply gone. I find simple pleasure in doing nothing, going nowhere, and boredom becomes the ultimate experience. I feel healthier and happier when I am here. When I am in the north woods I feel like the natural world comes through me; that my purpose is to be one with nature, produce art, and be at peace with all creatures. I could go on.

This is not what I am like when I am home. It’s not what I think and feel many times when I’m on vacation in other places. When I’m in those woods, I want to wander. If given the chance, I’ll find some trail somewhere and simply imagine myself into another existance or I’m by the water listening to the wind and water. Every time I have been up there it reminds me how far I’m living from where I want to be, or at least how I think I want to be. The suburbs of Chicago do not feel the same way.

I also have family up there, my grandmother, and for the past few years, my aunt and uncle. But the feelings I have aren’t dependent on them because we have visited them in other places earlier in all of their lives, and I don’t get the deep connection that I have now. It doesn’t appear to be age or responsibility or any other factor as well. I’ve changed, my life has changed, my family has changed, and the feelings I have have stayed.

This visit was too short. It’s possible that any time shorter than a lifetime would feel too short. To move there would mean a drastic change in lifestyle, from the ground up. Of course, it’s possible to do. But the family home has been there for decades and so there is no rush. My grandmother lived in it most recently. She still does, but only technically. Within the last six months she was moved to a lovely assisted living facility just down the street because there was an unfortunate incident with a fire and a microwave and a slipped short term memory. This was the first time I had seen her in three years.

She’s content. She has her crosswords and her cryptogram puzzles. She watches the Wheel of Fortune and America’s got Talent in the evenings. My aunt stops by periodically to have short, circular conversations and pick up the week’s laundry, dropping off clean clothes and linens still stored at the house. She will never live at home again.

That fact made this trip particularly difficult for me. The house has been in my dad’s and aunt’s name for decades, for tax and inheritance reasons. If we can figure out how to make it work, it will eventually pass to me and to my sister. For this trip my family and I were welcome to stay there but my grandmother wasn’t present. A few pieces of furniture were taken to her new room, but the rest stay exactly as I remembered them last. Pale pink furniture and carpets. The occasional teal and green accent. Knick knacks everywhere; the prolific turtle figurines that my kids at eighteen and twenty-two still love to count. When I was in the house, not visiting her, not wandering, I would drift from room to room, opening drawers, remembering, looking at all the artworks of gardens and flowers, all the decorations of gentle forest animals and leaves. At times I would just stop and cry. I would mourn, not that she was gone because she wasn’t, but because a certain phase had passed, quietly like the wind through the trees, and I could no longer pretend that we could go on just as we have. We have all traveled a little further down the timeline.

The north woods will always be a haven. I have been back for four days and I long to go back already. It will fade with time as the pressures of a busy, too busy life demand more from me. But I hope that with age and experience, I know better to stay close to those things that I love.