The Last Word On Nothing

An Icelandic beach, which I did not visit this summer.

Summer is not over, officially, just yet; I know, it’s past Labor Day, but it is still Lower Summer* here and I am not ready. So although it is not gone, I am already mourning its end, especially the things I did not do, and the stone fruit I did not eat. (At least my daughters had more than they could bear.)

I have mostly been feeling like I did not travel as much as I would have liked this summer. I didn’t plan ahead; I had insufficient child care to do anything in a timely fashion, as always; and to be honest, my younger child is at a difficult age for travel. She loves airplanes, but really does not enjoy being inside of one.

I was a little envious when I saw photos from friends and colleagues who traveled to places like France and Japan for their honeymoons. I felt jealous when a high school friend shared photos of her visit to Iceland. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t we go somewhere equally cool and ambitious.

It’s not that I was trying to keep up with the Joneses or the whoevers. It was that these photos reminded me of what I love about long-distance travel, and traveling with my kids, as annoying as it can be logistically. Travel, especially international travel, drags you outside yourself, gives you a new perspective, forces you to be more aware of your surroundings. Unfamiliarity breeds admiration, even acclamation. Getting around in unfamiliar surroundings requires so much focus that you simply notice more. You appreciate more. You take it all in. I felt like I didn’t get enough of this, and worse, I was lazily depriving my kids of the singular joy of new experiences.

Over Labor Day weekend, I decided we needed to at least squeeze in a camping trip. My 2-year-old, the one who is not a good flier, was beyond excited.

When we arrived, she ran through the forest with her sister, who delighted in helping her look for lichen on the north-facing trunks of the pines. She scooped up fistfuls of gravel and called them “baby rocks.” She took me by the hand, walked through a stand of firs, and insisted that I “yook, yook at dis!” She said “hi” to the trees. She acclaimed every pine cone, every boulder, every fuzzy patch of moss.

I thought about one of my favorite books, recommended to me by one of my favorite friends: “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” by Annie Dillard. I loved this book’s fever-dream-like descriptions of otherwise everyday things, like a praying mantis egg, fish in a creek, a tree lit by the sun. I love how Dillard imbues mundane objects with a rapturous, almost holy aura. Without intending it, this is what my toddler was doing, too. Acclamation of the mundane is perhaps a toddler’s greatest skill. The phrase “childlike wonder” is a cliche for a reason.

Watching her watch the world was not unlike traveling to a foreign land. Everything is new to my toddler. Every bit of language is unfamiliar, every landscape is fresh, in the same way that traveling to other countries feels invigorating to me.

It started raining when I was writing this. Fall, my least favorite season, is imminent. It might really be here already. Looking back on last week’s camping trip, I feel better about my decision to avoid more than one airplane trip. The undiscovered country of a toddler’s world was enough for one summer.

*The poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraquib called September “Lower Summer” in a recent Instagram post and I will not soon forget this extremely apt phrase.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons image of a black sand beach in Iceland, where I did not go this summer.