Nat

The end of vacation is bittersweet, of course. It is always hard to reconcile the feeling of being completely relaxed with the imagined pressure of returning full bore into one’s responsibilities. One of the things I’m challenging myself to do this year, though, is to enjoy each nice moment without looking past it toward the next likely challenge.

So here I am, with my wife and stepdaughter safely deposited at the airport, waiting for my later flight in a great independent cafe in Palm Springs. The music and coffee are good. I have a private table with an electrical outlet and a high-speed internet connection. I’ve been able to download some movies and TV shows for my flight later today, and I’m catching up on email.

Palm Springs is one of those places where you can imagine that a large number of residents feel grateful every day for the palm trees, sunshine and mountain views that abound here. We will return next winter, as we did this year, and if we’re lucky, my stepdaughter’s field hockey team will earn an entry into the tournament they hold every Thanksgiving week right up the street from our favorite hotel. It is great fun to think that we would come back here before the end of the year.

In short, I love having a happy experience that I’m likely to repeat in the near future. My wife likes to say that we are creatures of habit, and I guess I would say that she is a creature of habit, but I’m happy to go along when the habits are so entertaining. Palm Desert is great for tennis this time of year, sunny and dry, and I took a lesson yesterday to try to revive my singles game. My instructor, Katie, had a great, easy way of thinking about the game.

Don’t think so much, she told me. It’s a simple game. Get the ball back over the net. She teaches a method that has the following slogan, “Form is not a fundamental.” What it means in the context of tennis is that you are just as likely to be responding to “an emergency situation” as to hit a shot with a perfect setup from a location you expected. Wow, what a life parallel.

In these cases, she says, do your best to get your racket on the ball and try to hang in there for a situation that’s more to your liking. Like all great instruction, and I find this especially from great athletic coaches for some reason, the most useful principles sound like a life philosophy.

So here I am in paradise for a few more hours, seeing my improved forehand approach shot in my mind, loving the bright sunshine on the sides of the Santa Rosa mountains, and thinking that it will be summer soon enough at home.

We flew to Phoenix on Southwest Airlines yesterday, and it’s the first flight I’ve had in 3 months that didn’t involve a lengthy delay in the airport or on the ground. They run an outstanding business, and it’s largely because their customer service is so good.

For example, the plane was oversold, and as airlines do, they worked hard to convince passengers with seats to volunteer to take a later plane in exchange for a small travel voucher and a hotel. It is not a very generous offer for most people, and they had no takers. But the gate agents handled it very well. Mostly one young man joked his way through the many reasons anyone should be glad to take the deal. “Does anyone like to visit their family at Christmas?” he asked at one point, and that led to several good reasons to take travel vouchers. Ultimately a few people took the deal, but I don’t think the appeal was any more successful than airlines usually are in that circumstance.

What struck me most–and it always does on Southwest–is that the staff handles everything with as much humor as possible. And this attitude is very contagious, invariably carrying over to the passengers, who took it very well on a 6-hour flight with every seat full. Children laughed and played with their parents. Strangers swapped stories.

We should all learn from this how much better everything is when we make an effort to enjoy the mundane routines and activities we pursue.

My family and I leave for a week’s vacation on Friday. We go to the same place in Carefree, Arizona, each April school vacation. The weather is great. We rent a nice little house on the golf course, and we play a lot of tennis.

Then, when we’re tired, we sit by one of the five pools and read our books. My wife and stepdaughter love to read, and every time I watch them, it makes me happy to share a love of reading with them.

Another reason I look forward to this trip is that usually the cacti are in full bloom this time of the year. Two years ago, on our first trip, the desert bloom was the best in 30 years because of unusual, sustained rains in March. There is nothing more spectacular than brilliantly colored flowers on rough, prickly cacti. The flowers are coral, pale yellow, lilac, magenta, even Key lime.

What a metaphor for finding joy after struggle, I always think. But mostly I think that what is beautiful is always striking for its beauty. I’ll think that as I walk to the gym in the morning and to the pool in the afternoon. It will make me happy all week.

Amelia Island, Florida, where I arrived this afternoon, has my favorite kind of beach. The beach here is wide with 15 yards of hard sand exposed at low tide, and it’s several miles long in front of our resort. I went for a walk before dinner, up the beach for 15 minutes and then back. A woman was walking her golden retriever. He was a large male with a thick coat and a tennis ball.

I rolled up my jeans and walked just at the water line. A family of sandpipers scampered about in the very shallow water, poking in the sand with their beaks. Flecks of sea foam covered the wet sand up and down the beach. I thought I would walk to the end of the beach and then turn around, but it didn’t end.

As I said, it’s my favorite kind of beach, the kind you can walk up and down until you’re tired, before you’ve run out of beach. There’s a beach like this at the Cape Cod National Sea Shore, and another like it at Hilton Head, South Carolina. There is nothing like the open space, which you can share with wild animals and young families. What a reminder that the world is beautiful.

I fly to Amelia Island, Florida, tomorrow morning for a business conference. I hope I will have just a little time off the clock to walk the beach. The weather forecast calls for sunny, highs in the 70s, which is heaven since it’s snowing here, again.

There is nothing like a trip to a nice place I’ve never been to make me hopeful. Just a simple change of routine helps me appreciate the simple pleasures of fresh air, sunshine, and listening to the birds singing in the morning.

My new job has me traveling more than I have in a few years, and it’s invigorating to visit new places again. I think it’s that any new scenery reminds to look at the world and really pay attention. I’ll be on the lookout for anything new. Stay posted.

I was stuck in a small plane on the runway in Cleveland yesterday evening for 2 hours and 40 minutes, and I’m still restless. I wasn’t restless in the plane. I read a novel and listened to live Grateful Dead recordings on my iPod.

I’ve been restless since getting to the house last night at 1:30. Couldn’t sleep until after watching American Idol on Tivo. Ultimately, I only slept for three and a half hours before getting up to go to work today.

So I’m exhausted, but mostly restless. When I travel and then return home, I keep traveling in my mind and just inside my skin for a few days, until I’ve really slept.

On the road, I gear up to see and live more than usual. Back at home, the energy spins around without an outlet. The office part of my office job is restful and dull all at once. It’s like coming home from vacation, but on a smaller scale: I keep looking for the next new thing. Gradually I convince myself that there is nothing I haven’t seen here before.

I am not happy to be back where it’s ordinary, but I am not sad either. I’m just looking for more, and I want to be diligent in how and when I look.

Palm Desert, California, where we’ve been this week, is the first place I’ve visited in years where I’ve wanted to move and also thought my wife would be happy. There’s something about the sunshine, the mountains, and the palm trees that make it feel like an oasis from everything troublesome or difficult.

Maybe it’s just being on vacation here that gives it this quality. I bought the local paper, The Desert Sun, this morning to read the real estate listings, and I read an article about a sting operation for parole violators. They rounded up a dozen parole offenders on weapons and drug charges, so I know this place has its problems like most other spots.

Still, the wondering makes me happy. How would it be to live in a place where you can play tennis outdoors all year long? Where you never have to drain the pool? Where you could have a palm tree in your back yard? It’s like living in a lottery win fantasy.

Yesterday at the tennis center, I admired the grapefruit trees, and our doubles partner said, “They let you pick the grapefruit and take them home if you want.” So we did.

They’re the pink ones, and i”ve never had one fresh off the tree. Like all fresh fruit, they are immeasurably more delicious this way. The juice spilled over my hand into the trash as I peeled it.

It tasted impossibly glamorous.

I love the start of a trip. My father spent lots of time in our childhood involving us in the planning of the next great family vacation. So we experienced the trips many times in our heads before we ever took them. The great question before each was whether the real trip would be better or worse than the imagined trip.

Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park was way better than we imagined. We saw moose and the wooly mountain goats that look like a cross between a goat and a unicorn. We had a snowball fight in August at 12,000 feet, the first time I ever experienced summer snow in the Rockies.

I was 13 for that trip, and I’ve loved Montana ever since. Today I have the internet and guidebooks to bring my imagined trip much closer to reality than in my childhood, but that’s OK. These tools help me know what I want to see and where I want to go before I ever arrive. I’ve become expert at finding the kinds of restaurants, coffee shops, bookstores, and hikes that I love.

It’s great to anticipate having this much fun.