What we want out of a vacation changes as we age. It changes from vacation to vacation. There was a time when it was all about culture for me. My idea of a real break was to stay in museums until my legs ached and then go stand in line to get tickets for an opera or a play. Later I became a disciple of relaxation and looked for words like beach and massage when making my plans. I found those little paper umbrellas that balanced on the side of rum drinks to be deeply charming then. Now I strive for transcendent invisibility and the chance to accomplish the things I can’t get done at home.

Ann Patchett

A few years ago celebrated author Ann Patchett wrote an essay for Gourmet magazine entitled Do Not Disturb. I found it in the 2007 Best American Travel Writing collection edited by Susan Orlean. I have always loved travel writing and Anne Patchett, so this essay spoke to my heart. In it, she describes leaving the comfort of her home – the stresses of the everyday – and checking in to the historically swanky and always glamorous Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles for a week to get work done. To read essays she is reviewing. To work on the novel she is writing. She goes to the Bel-Air to fade into transcendent productive invisibility.

The last few years have made me think about travel. As I have watched the world from a distance, cancelled scheduled vacations, and reminisced about a different time, I ask, “What stage of vacationing I am in?” Am I in the go and do and drink it all in stage? Am I in the give me a beach stage? Am I in the getting work done stage? From behind my keyboard in vacation purgatory, any vacation sounds perfect. All that being said, I want to muse and remember, celebrate and daydream, and perhaps conspire with the gods to breathe in the sense of wonder that travel provides, breathe out health and safety for all, breathe in mountain vistas and palm trees, breathe out beautiful journeys and heart’s desire for all.

Go and Do and Drink It All In

This describes most of my past vacation behavior. Domestic and international. Long weekends and global jaunts. Bathing in Tirta Empul and snorkeling by shipwrecks on the Florida Reef. Lighting candles in sacred cathedrals and talking with a Balinese healer. Visiting the world’s finest museums and relaxing in island tiki bars and conch shacks. Jet boating on the Snake River outside of Queenstown and hiking to Nooksack Falls. Eating lunch on the bumper of a Jeep on the road to Hana and dinner at Le Cirque on the Vegas strip. [Insert sigh.] Exploring is exciting. Abandon is exhilarating. Experiencing is intoxicating.

To Love the Beach

The older I get the more beach I become. I enjoy South Beach under the shade of a huge cabana with oceanside service from a fancy hotel restaurant curled up with a book. I enjoy feeling the waves wash over me on the beach in Kauai just steps away from our room where wine and macadamia nuts are plentiful. The beach in Antigua is a perfect place to spend hours in a surf side cabana listening to the ocean drinking tropical drinks and eating just-caught seafood. My heart beat slows down on a beach vacation. The rhythm of the waves. The rising and setting sun. Beaches, even in the cold, of part of the cosmic ebb and flow that we don’t generally feel in our day-to-day.

Getting Work Done

I have worked from home for years. I truly understand Patchett’s desire for space and time to get work done, and the difficulty of finding that time and space at home. That being said, I have settled in to several writing projects. I have gotten used to working alongside my husband, who now works from home, too. Over the years, working from home has mean writing in coffee shops. I have always enjoyed the rhythm of a coffee shop — the smell of the coffee, the collective writer’s energy, the conversations that occur. In this way, getting work done is simply getting work done, a vacation into myself.

Do Not Disturb

The last few years have been a catastrophic political, health, and environmental disaster. To be talking about taking a vacation feels a bit out of place — indulgent and privileged, perhaps. In light of the load many others have carried, I feel guilty saying that I (the minimally inconvenienced) am ready to take a vacation. I am one of the many who are tired and need rest. Deeply tired. I am ready to be able to make travel plans. I am ready to go places and not just read about them or post things from long ago adventures. I am ready to have the safety and security and welfare of others be honored, and still be able to open my arms to the world. I suppose we are all having to find vacations where we can find them right now. Find space for breath and slowing down where and when we can. Finding ways to explore and recharge where and when we can. Find space to feel awe and wonder and joy where and when we can.