I just returned from a few days on the road to relax and unwind. I guess I have owed it to myself, I haven’t had an actual vacation since there was a Black man in the White House. So, I decided to get away for a few days with my wife (those who read my first book will recognize her as Maxine. That’s right, Max Stout). We were celebrating the 30th anniversary of out first date. Yes, we still keep track of that, don’t judge. Maybe that is one of the reasons we got to celebrate the occasion. That and the fact that we each have our own TV.
We went to a place called Chico Hot Springs near the entrance to Yellowstone National Park. It is really a nice, rustic place. By rustic I mean no TV, no phones, no air conditioning. Talk about roughing it. While I was there, I saw this person sitting on the porch with her attention focused on her smartphone, and thought it really said a lot. Probably it has something to do with the fact that I recently started to work on a project called “From Smoke Signals to Email.” It is a memoir about growing up in an extremely rural setting and some of the unique perspectives that experience gave me. Mainly like what would people of my parent’s generation think of the technology we have now that we take completely for granted?
The trip was a bit typical for this time of year in that the air is full of smoke from fires that has drifted over the state. I’m told this batch came from wildfires in California, or maybe it was the riots in Portland. But it’s August, and we have smoke. Things are normal. We played golf in Bozeman, Montana on the way over. The course is named Bridger Creek Golf Course, but you could probably pass it off as the Great Smokey Mountains Golf Course and no one would question it. Maxine is really getting good at the game; it is all I can do to keep up with her. I’m sure I would have done better if not for the smoke.
I would have to say it took some getting used to with the necessity to wear a mask everywhere we went. I’m not one to politicize it, but I’m also not totally convinced we won’t look back on this time in a few years and wonder what we were thinking. But that is a topic for another day. So, all in all, it was an enjoyable getaway. Maxine summed it up nicely as we celebrated our date night, saying that it would make a good “Groundhog Day” experience, and I thought that was one of the nicest things she could have said. After 30 years together, I would say it doesn’t get much better than that.
