Wanderlust and St. Augustine

A lot of our extended family is traveling right now. I am not jealous at all . . . okay maybe just a little. My brother, just returned from Japan, is now in California taking in the majestic sequoias (did you know that is one of the only words in the English language that contains all five vowels?) with his wife and baby daughter. My folks are with friends basking in the desert beauty surrounding Tuscon. My in-laws are at the ranchero in the gorgeous mountains of Mexico. I am coming off of a homework marathon of three days watching gloomy, cold April rain slide down the windows.

I credit my parents with giving my brother and me the bittersweet gift of wanderlust. We took our first family vacation in 1980 and have been traveling ever since. I'll have to write some other time about that first trip. Even though I was only 7 years old, the details are burned into my brain and memorialized by my Young Author's Conference award winning book Bobcats, Thunderstorms and Me. It's hilarious, and the title hints at just a few of the misadventures we had on that camping trip to the Badlands of South Dakota.

So today, I will enjoy the sweet memories of trips gone by and be thankful for them. And as I scale mountains of laundry and contemplate countertop landscapes of dishes, I will meditate on the words of St. Augustine:

"People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering."