Farseeing, not sightseeing
Traveling with love and a long-ago commitment, not an agenda, is so much better.
When Cort and I first met and fell in love almost ten years ago, I wasn’t yet a Coloradan. I’d moved to Denver three years earlier from rural New Hampshire. I was a died-in-the-wool New Englander, born and raised outside of Boston. I’d barely been in the west.
Cort, on the other hand, had been living in Colorado for more than 30 years. He loves the west. As an avid fly fisherman, backpacker, and aspiring naturalist, it’s in his bones.
So we made a commitment to each other. He would show me the west and I’d show him the northeast.
He did that, taking me on myriad camping trips and hundreds of hikes. If the weather is decent, we spend some part of everyday outdoors. Almost three years ago, we spent our honeymoon camping at Ridgeway State Park in the southwestern part of the state.
At our honeymoon dinner in Ridgeway, Colorado, in late September 2021. It’s still possible to have an elegant dinner (or dress for a wedding) when you’re camping.
That was an impulse decision. We were attending the wedding of our dear friends Sherry Glickman and Neal Paul in Trinidad, Colorado, just three weeks before our own. Instead of a hotel, we stayed at Trinidad State Park. Sitting on lawn chairs at our campsite, soaking up the healing September sunshine, I said, offhandedly, “I could camp for our honeymoon.” The next morning, Cort — unbeknownst to me — had made reservations. He was all over that idea. (It was perfect, except for un-Colorado-like lack of sun.)
Sherry and Neal at their reception, outside Temple Aaron in Trinidad, early September 2021.
But it was harder for me to keep up my end of the bargain. We took a few brief trips out east, typically connected to events: taking 13-year old Teddy to overnight camp, my cousin David’s memorial service, my second cousin Brittany’s Maine wedding, which would have done Martha Stewart proud.
Now, I finally get to fulfill my commitment.
I woke up this morning at our friends’ Lise and Skip’s in the tiny town of Anson, in central Maine, listening to torrential rain on the metal roof over their “Songbird Suite,” a small guesthouse that they built adjacent to their house.
The Songbird Suite is to the right of the hammock, with the open french door.
Half asleep in the early dawn, the rain thrumming in the background, I realized that part of what is making this trip so special is that “showing Cort the east” has never meant sightseeing. We’re not seeking out museums, or historic forts, or famous restaurants (well, there’s one on our list), or even the tallest mountains or celebrated lighthouses.
“Farseeing” — by which we mean learning from our time together with people we love and with strangers, and from our chance encounters with nature, history, art and culture — is more interesting than sightseeing. It carries none of the obligatory feeling with which I think we often trudge from place to place, crossing things off our lists, like bagging a Colorado 14-er or a New Hampshire 4,000-footer to say we’ve done it, not to be present in the experience itself.
I am practicing, and loving, deeply listening.
Lise & Skip’s Japanese garden.
We’re three weeks in. We’re leaving Lise and Skip’s glorious place today, heading to the Maine coast to Wolfe’s Neck Oceanfront Campground in Freeport, near Portland. So much has happened so far — so many conversations about life, and love, and work, and callings. Some moments of serendipity, of things meant to be. So much shared food, both at the homes of friends and in their favorite restaurants, and of course a few peanut butter sandwiches made in the truck.
And some rain, some bugs, and a bit of existential crisis, which I’ll save for later.
The intermittent lack of electrical power has proved a challenge to writing Farsighted. We came to Anson a day early from Rangeley Lake in northwest Maine, where it rained continuously. Deep in the woods, the solar power that’s so reliable in Colorado didn’t work — obviously. Without power, we can’t run satellite Internet (Starlink). When you’re under deep cover in the forest, rainy days that seem perfect for writing turn out not to be.
But I’m determined to share all of the farseeing experiences we’ve already had in these last three weeks.
More to come.
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