Sick Pilgrim
What I Did on My Summer Vacation
I’m starting my fourth (and final) week of my summer vacation. The first three weeks were INTENSE.
I co-edited a poetry anthology on deadline. I became a grandmother for a second time. I got a surprise, unsolicited job offer that I accepted. (Not before I agonized over the decision for a week, though.) My husband and I refinanced our mortgage. I reviewed a novel in draft for a writer friend.
I also caught up with several old friends, read some books, finished a baby quilt, tried to catch up with my garden, attended to a mess of routine (and one wholly unexpected and a wee bit nerve wracking) doctors appointments, and spent some quality time with each of my children and my husband.
It has mostly been wonderful stuff.
It has all been exhausting.
Towards the end of last week, I found myself struggling—physically, mentally, emotionally.
Now, like my Mama before me, I am an extrovert. So when I get like this, I usually gather some of my beloveds around me to recharge. Only, I found that I just couldn’t.
What I did do was take a long drive.
Friday morning, I woke up before the sunrise in order to cross my fair Commonwealth to get to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, out in the Berkshires. I had a free ticket to an open rehearsal that began at 10:00 AM. The guest artist was violinist Joshua Bell. <swoon>
Tanglewood is dear to me. It is one of my happy places. I first fell in love with this special spot decades ago when I took my son on a mother-daughter date to western Massachusetts for back-to-school outlet shopping, and a walking tour of Tanglewood. The grounds are spectacular, with gardens and hidden bowers, and a stunning view of the Stockbridge Bowl (Lake Mahkeenac) and the Berkshire Mountains. As we walked around this enchanting place, we would come across the various outbuildings used for rehearsals. My young son, a budding violinist himself, was shocked to discover that the musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra had to practice as hard as he did; that their instructors got frustrated and corrected them, too. We decided to stay for an open rehearsal. We’ve returned every summer since—until the pandemic.
As soon as I set foot on the grounds, I felt my body begin to untense. It was as if I had been holding my breath—for minutes, hours, months?
As I walked the familiar paths, the grass still wet with dew, I took off my sandals. As I wound my way past the manor house that today serves as a museum, I was delighted to hear both bird song and early music practice. At the bower where a memorial to Aaron Copland stands, I sat on a granite bench and pulled out my journal.
I ended my musings there with, “Maybe my heart will be filled with so many beautiful things that it will push all that discontents me out. Lord hear my prayer.“
Lord hear my prayer. Indeed.
It might have been a rehearsal, but it was the real enough for me.
I finished just in time to saunter over to the Koussevitsky Shed, the outdoor music theater. I found a perfect spot—the end seat of the front row of the last section of the audience. Dead center.
I pulled out some needlepoint (to keep me from fidgeting) just as the concertmaster brought the orchestra to order. The oboe played a tuning A note. The orchestra followed. The guest conductor, a spry elderly Swede, appeared. The smattering of audience applauds. And then the orchestra plays through Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. Surprisingly, the conductor saved his corrections until the end, so it truly was as if we were at a concert. The music is beautiful, the most elven, the most dance-music-like of Beethoven’s works. Perfect for this summer day in this setting that could have come straight out of a Tolkien story.
I found myself pulling the thread through my piece along with the violins, as if I could somehow catch the notes in my needlepoint.
There was a short break, then the orchestra and Joshua Bell returned to the stage. The music, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, Op 61, was just magical. Truly stirring. I teared up more than once.
By lunch time, it was over, and the ushers were oh-so-politely shooing us off the grounds so they could prepare for the evening’s concert.
I just wasn’t ready to go home.
I could have gotten back on the highway for home. It had been two years since I was in the Berkshires, though. Some places are just YOUR PLACES, where you feel safe or at home or alive or at peace. The small towns around the Berkshire Mountains are one of those places for me. So, I made the decision to take the LONG way home.
I headed a bit further west, then turned north—through Pittsfield, and Lanesboro, and Williamstown. I stopped near the campus of Williams College for lunch at a favorite Indian restaurant.
Then I continued to the northwest corner of Massachusetts into North Adams. Just driving through the downtown made me grin. I stopped at Natural Bridge State Park for a short hike through the former marble quarry.
I continued north just a little bit longer. Just as I reached the Vermont border, I turned east onto the Mohawk Trail, where I wound up and down and around the Hoosac Mountain range. With granite outcroppings on one side, a rushing river on the other, and stunning views every way you turned, it’s a fantastic drive.
I took a little side track into the village of Shelburne Falls, where I spent a delighted hour wandering through a favorite coop art gallery. I walked across the Bridge of Flowers—where an abandoned eye sore of a cement bridge was turned into a masterpiece by the local garden club.
That was my last stop for the day. I still had a few hours of meandering across the top of the state, though, until I finally got on a highway just outside of Worcester, where I sped along home just in time to feed a very hungry cocker spaniel.
Exactly what the doctor ordered.
My field of expertise is trauma-informed teaching of very young children. I have learned through years of work and study that people carry their stress and trauma not just in their minds, but in their whole bodies. These past 18 months of pandemic, plus the other challenges life throws at you while you are busy doing other stuff, have been traumatic for us all. Though I had not realized it, as my pandemic experiences have been relatively easy, it has taken a toll on my physical body. Spending the day filling each of my senses with beautiful things? That was a prescription for healing.
Where would your long drive take you? What sensory experiences keep you going?
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