Vacations and Imagination

What do you do when pressures mount and you can’t Get Away From It All? Television news is depressing and scary, money pressures, health worries; sometimes it all gets to be a bit much and you want to run away somewhere but, for one reason or another, you can’t? You need a vacation! When you can’t pack your bags and run off somewhere, you can go, in your imagination to some place beautiful and restful (or exciting, whichever is better.)

I like to think of my brother’s house beside a lake in Minnesota. These are pictures my niece Missy Albrecht sent. Thank you, Missy. Aren’t they wonderful? When I visited there, I got up early, carried a cup of coffee to the lake and sat beside those still waters watching the morning sun turn the surface to pink and orange. Many water birds frequent that lake, especially loons. The only sound would be their haunting cry and, the soft bump of a tethered boat against the dock.

At night, we sat around the fire pit. I was probably the only one wearing a jacket. In Minnesota, nights are chilly for this Arkansas gal, even in July.

Of course, another favorite memory vacation is Ireland. I have only to close my eyes and I’m there, mist shrouding the mountains, sheep grazing on the grass, surrounded by the Irish Sea and more than a thousand years of history.

One of my favorite poems is The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats: