Mellifluence

Reverb10: December 22: Travel

Following a link from Gretchen Rubin at the Happiness Project, I found the Reverb10 site, which encourages us to spend each day of December looking back at 2010 and thinking about what we want in our lives in 2011, through daily prompts. Since I started nine days late, I'm not going to write about all of them, but I think I'll write now about one that sings to me. 

December 22 – Travel How did you travel in 2010? How and/or where would you like to travel next year?

New Orleans. Cancun. Tahoe. Napa. Bodega Bay. The Black Rock Desert. I traveled for work, for play, and for everything in between. The trips were inevitably glorious, trying, beautiful, complex, and adventuresome. I watched the sun rise over the Mississippi. Danced in the warm waves off the tip of Mexico and watched lightning flash across the beach at night, warm in the arms of my love. Smelled the dust and crushed grape-smell of the Napa valley, hiking up an unnamed creek after escaping a traffic jam on Silverado Trail. Watched technicolor clouds tumble over a hidden reservoir in a forest. Walked the humid streets of my favorite city with friends and family, celebrating my 40th birthday. Tasted playa dust and watched from atop a bus as a wooden effigy burned amidst a storm of dust and smoke. Slept in a trailer that rocked in the wind off the desert as stars brighter than I'd ever seen floated across the sky outside. Walked a cold northern beach, bundled against the wind, while the shorebirds scattered through the seafoam. Drank many a toast, laughed a lot, admired the view.

For 2011, I will be in New Orleans and the Black Rock desert again, as most years. Possibly Washington DC for a conference. I'm going to try to find a temporary apartment rental in New Orleans in May/June and live and telecommute from there for about 6 weeks. I've always wanted to know what it would be like to live there, not just party there.  I'd love to visit my old haunts: Grass Valley, Santa Cruz, Tahoe, Napa. I'd like to go on a road trip in the US south.

The sense of movement is what I like best about travel, that and seeing things I've never seen before. I've never liked staying in one place for too long, but I like coming back to a home. This year, I look forward to more adventures, more photos, more stories, and more new friends!