Slow Travel

You’d think that living in a place like Boulder, Colorado, I’d be well grounded in the art of contemplation, what with all the practitioners of Buddhist meditation and advanced yoga who are my neighbors.  But as a mother of two busy children, and a wife, and a writer and academic juggling a full-time mix of part-time writing and teaching work, I’m lucky if I can find time to walk my dog by noon, let alone savor the meadowlark’s song as the sun crests the pasture east of my house, while I sit reverently with a cup of fresh-ground morning coffee. 

Most people look to a vacation as an opportunity to relax, a respite from the speed, demands and familiarity of our daily lives.  Yet often, especially if we’re traveling to big cities or a broad destination such as Europe or Alaska, we end up driving too many miles, cramming our days too full, and ticking off a too-long checklist of “must sees.”  We come home needing a vacation from our vacation, struggling with a disconcerting feeling that we only glossed the surface of what we hoped to discover during our time away.