The Wormhole

credit: Nathan Anderson via unsplash.com

Tomorrow I leave one beloved home to go back to another beloved home. My five year old told me a few days before we left for this Christmas trip, "The only thing I don't like about our house is it's so far away from Grammy." I agreed, "That's the one thing I don't like about this house either."

When we were little my Trekkie mom used to wish for the power to "Beam me up, Scottie" and now that we live multiple states away from each other we both do.

What I love about living an active transportation lifestyle is the way it makes my neighborhood come alive. Moving at a slower pace allows me to appreciate all the beautiful gifts my particular part of the world has to offer. This way of moving through the world gives me an opportunity to respect just what it takes to travel in ways that moving by car or plane have allowed me to take for granted.

Maybe it's growing up. Maybe it's the blog. Maybe it's everyday biking. But this trip it has been made abundantly clear how far away I live from both my family and Parker's family. I love where I live and how I live but that is the one major drawback.

I remember watching A Knight's Tale, starring Heath Ledger and crying when he left his family to go off to follow the knight (I will always love Heath Ledger and I don't care who knows it). In a time before even bicycles, families could be split up by economic and vocational choices. My own family immigrated to America from Germany, Scotland, and Wales a few generations ago, when the trip across the ocean was a long, perilous sail, to become farmers and miners on a different continent.

In trying to reconcile my love of the local with my love of those who live states away, I realize that saving money without a car would give me more to spend on travel to see my family. Also, long road trips in a car are hard to imagine now that I'm losing my stamina for driving. Even a thirty minute car trip has seemed like a lot this week.

So, until they build that wormhole that I can step right through to wherever I want to go, Amtrak it is.