All the Islands and Highlands

 

Photo: shot using a tilt-shift app, this beach is off the coast of Washington State. Trees and foliage are blurry in the foreground but the center point is smooth water, rolling waves and broad sky. The meandering pathway off to the right is calling me!

Somehow, my Spotify playlist these past few days has sailed into and drifted around Margaritaville. Now, I've never considered myself a Parrothead but I have no quarrel with that life. The eleventeenth day of solid rain had me daydreaming a bit about sleep-in mornings, carefree salt breezes and soft summer nights. How do we summon that laid-back laissez-faire? Why not have a beach cocktail and ask Jimmy Buffett!

When Jimmy wrote the song Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, he took on the persona of a grizzled old beach bum who'd seen and done a thing or two, but he was just 31 and still quite early in his career. The song resonates with travelers, boasting unforgettable lines like: "reading departure signs in some big airport reminds me of the places I've been" and "I think about Paris when I'm high on red wine I wish I could jump on a plane". Images flashed through my mind like those split-flap letters that used to drop on train timetables. Flashes of palm-treed islands and rolling-hill highlands transported me far away from soggy Central New York.

Knowing that our best season would soon follow the monsoon-like storms, I took comfort that soon I'd be the son of a son of a... gardener. I would be lazing on the back patio with a cheeseburger (hot off the grill) in paradise and it'd indeed be 5-o'clock somewhere.  That beach attitude works anywhere, eyepatch not required - on the balcony of a high-rise in the city or sittin' 'round a stocktank in BFEast Texas. All Jimmy asked was that you left your grumpy face behind and had a song in your mouth and a drink in your hand.

Indeed, it is that wanderlust and wanton wayfaring that these songs inspire for me. Someone recently told me about a trip to visit friends in another region and how they slept on the most uncomfortable of mattresses. We've all been there, haven't we? Something in your host's accommodations or comportment was difficult to get comfortable with when you're spending 24 hours with them. This is when the most important consideration of planning travel is not the location, the duration, or the accommodation - it is the companion you have chosen to travel with. Unless it is a spouse or life partner, then there's a chance that a couple days together may start to fray the nerves like cutoff blue jeans. 

I often dream of going places - returning to familiar locations and discovering new ones, but that wishful thinking, once achieved, just makes me pine for home. My own pillow, my own bed. My own solid routine. No matter where we pirates roam, there's no place like our pirate home.