I’m blogging from Colorado today. With John Denver’s sunshine literally on my shoulder and a few cloudless days of skiingbehind me. I would take a moment to lament the fact that my legs ache, my back hurts, and my lips are chapped, but those of you who ski will not have sympathy for me. Three days of sunshine in the mountains with good friends are worth the muscle aches.

Spending time in Colorado is always a boon to my soul. Majestic landscapes can do this to us, whether the shoreline of Maine or the grandeur of Lake Tahoe.

Pulled out of my midwestern slumber and chair lifted up to 11,000+ feet made my heart sail. One afternoon I took some solo time and made my way across the 5000 skiable acres of Vail. Heading to a place they call the “Blue Sky Basin” I took my time hopping on and off lifts to plop myself atop a snow covered peak (ironically, the site of a formerly famous act of eco-terrorism).

As I slid off the lift I was reminded anew of the vast wilderness space that is so accessible to many of us today. I shuffled my way over to the edge of the summit and took in the views. A majestic panorama, miles of open space. Jagged peaks, ridges that jut up into the sky, avalanche gulches where only thoughtless trees dare to grow. All this with perfect blue skies as a canopy.

I leaned on my ski poles and took a deep breath. It was quiet up there too. Sure, there were other skiers sitting at picnic tables, adjusting gear, crunching on snacks. But the overarching silence of the place was awesome. The backdrop was not the hum of a freeway or the clanging of construction equipment, but a sort of quiet that almost presses down on you. You cannot help but hear it, even with closer, smaller sounds nearby.

Anyway, it was pure bliss. And as I skied away I felt a little boost to my spirit.

As I made my way down the mountain and back to rendezvous with my friend, the moment had passed. We grabbed some coffee and within a few moments had tossed our gear into her truck and began the journey back to Denver with the other thousands of Saturday skiers bound for home on I-70. Which, can probably boast the country’s highest, weekly traffic jam.

Tourists, natives, locals, vacationers etc., all plodding along through Summit County and beyond. All who crept up to the mountains to sneak a view of the landscape or to hear the silence. All who took a gasp of clean air and grabbed a glimpse of blue skies, only to find themselves tailgating an 18-wheeler a few hours later.

As we snaked along I-70 I noticed again the landscape that is covered in increasingly brown and dead trees. Millions upon millions of dead lodge pole pine trees cover the hillsides of Summit County and other areas throughout the state. A voracious pest called the Mountain Pine Beetle is eating its way through the Rocky Mountains. From Montana to Wyoming, from Colorado all the way up through British Columbia, this pesky little bug is killing the forests.

After millions of dollars in research and seemingly endless hours of time, the USFS has largely determined that there is not much they can do to prevent the spread of the outbreak. And while it is a naturally occurring event that should simply clean out the forests and make room for new trees, this outbreak is particularly nasty for many reasons.

First, the average winter temperatures out West have increased and where the beetle once would eventually die with a long enough cold snap, a warm up of just two degrees or so has helped the beetle carry on. Second, our decisions to manage forest fires (often for very good reasons) has left us with overgrown forests that should have burned naturally long ago. This means that there are too many trees of the same age and they are so dense that the spread of the beetle is easy.

I could go on for days about the fight against this pest, that is expected to take out all of Colorado’s lodge pole pines in the next 5 years. But, what I realized as I headed down I-70 was that I was caught in between two worlds and I could not find a way out of either one.

You see, if indeed climate change is to blame for the beetle, then my chugging along, spewing CO2 from the car after a day of skiing is partly to blame. My desire to spend time in nature is harming it as well. But on the flip side, I do believe that we are designed to enjoy and marvel in open spaces and wild places. Not submit them to our insatiable appetite or destroy them, but to hike them or enjoy their silence is not a bad thing.

You see the dilemma then? Killing the very forest I went to enjoy definitely defeats the purpose. Is it naive and idyllic to want blue skies on a day of skiing and all the trees to be intact on the way home? Probably. But what is the alternative? Not to go at all? Some extremists would say yes here. I respect that. But will also confess I am selfish enough to want to play. So what do we do? Any thoughts?

Last night we had dinner with some friends in town, a fabulous time indeed. Kids running amuck after a rainstorm. Mud everywhere. Good grilling, good wine, good conversation. The sort of evening that makes you want to sit back in a deck chair and say “ahhhhhh.” 

Of course I am still several years from truly sitting back at anytime and saying “ahhhh.” Our daughter, while only 19 months, seems to think that she can keep up with all the older boys in her life. And while I greatly endorse the spirit behind this, it does rob you of the chance to sit and eat when she is either trying to climb the tower on the swing set or take off with someone’s iPod. She was covered head to toe in mud when we left. An adorable pink dress destroyed, but the little spitfire still had her bow in place when we left. I have to give her some credit for that.

So our wonderful dinner hosts had one of those outdoor fireplace things where you can roast marshmallows and be all warm and toasty and feel sort of like you are camping. I love these. I dream about having one of these. Some people dream of yachts or expensive cars, I dream of a fire pit. What I love best about it is the smell of campfire smoke. I love that thick, ashy smell that saturates your hair and clothing. Albeit the next day I am irritated at the pile of clothing that still reeks of it, but in the moment, the crackle and hiss of the wood followed by the smell of smoke is like heaven to my little nose.

For me, this simple scent recalls every family vacation and camping trip we’ve ever had. Not, of course, the exact detail of each one. But in my mind, the simple smell of campfire smoke has me camping in Montana, visiting Wal Drug, hiking in Wyoming, seeing Mt. Rushmore, and watching my parents argue about finding the absolute best campsite. It makes me think of watching the landscape of Nebraska zip past and fighting with my sister over the boundaries of the back seat.

The olfactory bulb in our brains is what I am told conjures up the close link between smell and memory. Supposedly the olfactory bulb, when it encounters a scent, triggers the brain to process that scent in a particular way, and to make associations. Like batter and a cake. Like grass and the lawnmower. Like campfire smoke and vacation. I’m also told that most of these associations happen when we are young because in youth is when we encounter most of our smells for the first time. There is only one first time to associate the smell of chocolate-chip cookies with round delicious circles of dough.

Anyway, this camp fire smoke smell has me itching to get my kids camping this year. My husband and I were once camping fanatics. It was what we did. Then came kids. We dragged our first out for his inaugural camping trip at a little under six weeks old. After that we sort of stopped. It became a debacle. Too many gadgets and packing and such involved. And I am grumpy when I don’t sleep and spending the night with a pile of kids in a tent makes me wince. It became phenomenally easier to just throw them in the car and head to my mom and dad’s cabin (where there are still camp fires aplenty).

But what I am advocating for here is getting out to go camping (which will likely make some of you log off at this point). We have our first trip of the summer planned next weekend. And I have to say, I am sort of bummed that my children will likely associate the smell of camp fire smoke with suburban fire rings because we’ve waited so long to re-engage this passion of ours. We’ve been to many a back yard to toast smores in their short lives. And while this is fabulous indeed, I got a little sad when I read up on the connection between smell and memory because I desperately want their memories to be of the wild west variety. I want them to have the sort of intense recollections of all things family vacation in a tent that I have. I want them to have their first stab at the scent of pine from a stand of lodge pole pines in a National Park rather than the air freshener in a car.

It reminds me that recalling my own memories is just not enough to get them to these places. And it also makes me want to high five my mom because she did all the hard work of getting my sister and I packed and clothed and on the trail. I will confess that I have been horribly lazy when it comes to doing the same for my kids.

But next weekend we will camp. And I am longing to trigger their little olfactory bulbs with something marvelously wild, something only recalled in a campsite in the woods with your siblings and your parents. Something that makes you, as a full grown adult, suddenly remember yourself sitting in a plastic lawn chair with a long stick, poking at the fire. Something that makes you remember that this life is about more than just the city and the suburbs. It is also about getting out there and walking for a bit in the woods. That whether we know it or not, the soul was meant to connect with creation, and that one little sniff of smoke can remind you so powerfully of this fact that you still can’t shake the smell of it.

We are on vacation. It is 100+ degrees on vacation. Wow. South Carolina heat. After driving the 900 some miles from Chicago to Hilton Head Island, we have arrived and it is gorgeous and it is sunny and it is lighthouses and the beach and cafes on the water. And it is simply wonderful to be away from home and the phone and my laundry (even though that seems to have followed us down here and will likely follow me home). And for those of you reading this who are not currently on vacation, I am sorry about that. But just think, sometime soon-ish you will be resting in a deck chair and I will not be and it will all even out.

Driving across the country with three kids did not pan out exactly as I had planned. We left late with the hope that they would all sleep in the car. They did not. The next day, not so much sleeping either. We ate organic cheetos and they are sort of gross. A cheeto is really still a cheeto, organic or not. They yellow stuff sticks to everyone’s hands and gets stuck in the cracks of all the car seats and when you add this to spilled milk, the juice of a few runaway grapes, and the strawberries we snacked on, it all is quite a sticky mess. They you arrive at your vacation destination and it is 100 degrees. Everything and everyone is sticky. And in my giddy “I am so on vacation” bliss I keep grabbing and hugging my kids and it is just sticky, sticky, gooey stick everywhere.

So here we are, sticky and happy in Hilton Head. Not too shabby I must say. I went running this morning. Talk about sticky and gross. But it was only 7:00 AM so that meant it was only in like the upper 80’s . . . . . and it was quiet and simple and lovely. And there are lagoons where alligators are rumored to live. I jogged past them looking for little lumpy heads that were popping up out of the flat water. Nothing yet. I saw a Sandhill Crane. That was cool. Heard the calls of all sorts of birds from the trees. There is moss dripping off all the tree limbs and these Banyan sort of tree roots everywhere. And even thought it is like a million degrees it is still shady in most places. And as I ran I sort of wafted in and out of two different worlds.

One was the Antebellum South where Gone With The Wind kept coming to mind. I kept thinking that Scarlet or someone would come popping out of the woods with corn bread. I thought about how people used to pick cotton in this heat and it made me sick for them. And then there was the world of Gary Player golf courses where I kept fearing that I would get in trouble by accidentally mixing up the bike path I was running on with the golf cart paths that clearly said something like this “Don’t you dare come on this path unless you are golfing!”

It’s a strange mix of care for the natural world and high end living down here. On the one hand they monitor the height of the lights that can be seen from the water so that sea turtles can mate and migrate properly. The whole island is modest with lighting and advertising and you can see stars from here and they take great pains to keep it that way. And on the other hand, there are 10 ga-gillion dollar yachts docked in the harbor and million dollar homes that are only used once a year. It always amazes me how someone can own a home bigger than most people in the world will ever see, and only visit it once a year. Ski towns are like this too. Slopeside condos that go for 2 mil and get stayed in 2 weeks a year.

I’m just a loser from the North who came down to rent a condo. I’m okay with that. I’m not Jimmy Buffet and I don’t have a yacht. I do have air conditioning in my condo and while everything green in me would love to give it a go and just open the windows to reduce our carbon emissions. It is seriously supposed to be 105 degrees today. So the AC is raging like a machine. 

So once again I am sitting with the dichotomies of my life. A great trip. A rockstar family. A good time at the beach. Lots of shells to look for, alligators to spot, and Banyan trees to admire (at least I think they are called Banyan trees, the guided nature walk is not until Tuesday). And then, there is the AC cranked up high, the sunblock with toxins to protect us all from the toxic sun. There are the uber-rich with boats and there is me with all my vacation attire and our condo that is uber-rich compared to the rest of the world, even if super modest for our world.

It’s the dichotomies that we live with so often. And I won’t obsess about it all this week, but I am aware of it. Aware of the fact that I need to tread lightly but sometimes don’t. Aware of the fact that there is always someone who looks richer and more foolish than I do, but aware of the fact that I am that someone to another person in this world. Aware of the fact that as I dine on Crab and Shrimp this week that it may have come from overfished waters. Aware of the fact that it takes a whole lot of electricity to cool this little eco-sensitive island.

Aware of the fact is all I am at the moment, I will look this week for a way to be more, but right now, this is all I am. There is wine to drink and I am on vacation. So here’s a toast to learning about the local wildlife and hoping that I can at least remember to turn off all the lights and avoid plastic water bottles!

It’s summer vacation time. Millions of Americans flitting about the country or the globe. People off to see Mount Rushmore or the Eiffel Tower. People swatting mosquitos and dripping in sunblock. Rest Areas and truck stops filled with road weary travelers. Airport security lines growing longer as the days continue to grow longer. Good times this American summer thing is.

I am a firm believer in the fact that a road trip builds character. We grew up in a family that road tripped and camped everywhere from Glacier National Park to Acadia National Park. We drove from Maine to Florida to Arizona and everywhere in between. We stopped at Wall Drug and we saw Rock City and we toured the Badlands and we camped in Orlando so we could see Mickey Mouse. When we were little, summer vacation meant my mom would sew my sister, my dad and I matching t-shirts that said “I love camping.” I can imagine that my dad was not overly thrilled with this. It meant we would load up the big blue Ford van my dad had with coolers and camping gear. And it meant we would listen to Kenny Rogers as we cruised across the country.

“You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run. You never count your money, when your sittin’ at the table. They’ll be time enough for countin’. When the dealin’s done.” Preach it Kenny!

My dad would listen to this song and sing along loudly as we cruised down the highway. His right hand tapping his knee as he drove. My mom would have her shoes off and her feet up on the dashboard, tapping her toes as well. We’d be in the back playing with silly kitschy stuff we picked up in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

I love these memories. I love that we had to learn how to share a back seat with a sibling for two weeks. Love that we got lost and watched mom and dad fight over it. Love that we ate random food we’d never heard of before. Love that sometimes the AC went out and we sweated across the mid-section of the country. Love that we camped out and grilled out and that we saw the country. It is a rite of passage that is undeniably American. Everyone must do this. Road trip.

We are embarking on our own today. A family reunion on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. No camping, a condo is our ultimate destination, but the drive will be the same. We have been packing for six weeks. I am tired and crazy from trying to find matching pairs of flip flops and lost sippy cups. I cannot find the charger for my iPod and have no clue if our newly potty trained middle son will make it all the way without an accident. But nonetheless, I am GIDDY!

We don’t have Kenny Rogers on the 8-Track. My husband grew up listening to Roger Whittaker with his family. We don’t have him downloaded either. But we did decide that Paul Simon would be our traveling music. It’s our vacation sing along. “I can call you Eddie and you can call me Al.” My kids will someday say “remember when Dad made us listen to that song about diamonds on the soles of our shoes?” And remember when they had iPods! How old school is that?!

This they will say someday as they reminisce. Our big family master plan is to road trip the life our of our kids. They will camp and hike and cover every inch of interstate this nation has to offer if we have anything to say about it. And since they are all under age 6, we currently have much to say about it. They will eat at Wall Drug and we will visit my sister in Bend, Oregon and we will camp on the beach someday. But today, we leave for Hilton Head and this is very exciting. It means beaches and the Salty Dog Cafe and lots of good times in the sun.

We will leave at rush hour in Chicago so, really, we will go nowhere pretty fast. But it’s the spirit of it all.

I could fly. It would not be easy and it would be pricey. But there is a lot to be learned as you drive across the country. And as far as eco-stuff goes, one trip on a plane is equal to several summers of road trips. Air travel accounts for roughly 3% of all carbon emissions worldwide. This is a lot for one industry. And this also does not account for airports and the infrastructure necessary to support air travel. This is just carbon emissions form the planes. It’s a big messy business. Jet Fuel. So bring on that open road. Bring on Paul and Kenny and Roger. Bring on the truck stops with the strange food. Road Trip!