Commentary : Staying Home, Away From It All

At the last minute, my husband was called to Houston and we had to cancel our plans for a five-day vacation at the Grand Canyon. We couldn’t get away the following weekend either. “No time for traveling,” I muttered as we began our so-called “weekend recreation,” those chores that we had left undone during the week. Afterward we stayed around the house, two couch potatoes watching videos.

We aren’t normally dull Jacks by any means; and yet we could not seem to get away from our enjoyable though potentially numbing routines. We liked our lives. But we wanted a different perspective on things and out-of-state travel was to have provided that revitalized outlook.

“Let’s see some local sights, instead. Something we can do in a day,” my husband suggested. His idea caught my imagination and “backyard travel” was born.

Several Saturdays later we made the weekend a holiday. If we were in a different region, what would we do? We’d visit national parks or other natural wonders; attend concerts and visit museums; see the local sights another city might offer, places and attractions special to that town. We decided to do that close to home.

The first criteria was to treat our house like a hotel. No household maintenance. I had done the laundry, vacuuming and other household chores earlier in the week. We set off for an afternoon of sightseeing.

The zoo in Santa Ana was 20 minutes away and both of us were amazed that in the heart of Santa Ana we could see animals from Africa, Australia and South America. We were partial to monkey antics and lingered in their area, watching the tiny Capuchin monkeys with their wise faces, the acrobatic white-handed gibbons, the elegant black and white colobus monkeys with their snowy fur “opera capes,” which extended down their backs and tails. Lemurs, toucans and bears. I never knew toucans had such brilliant blue eyes.

At the children’s petting zoo, we fed the farm animals: a chicken resembling a walking cotton ball, the unsheared sheep and frisky goats and miniature ponies. The last time I had fingered real wool was at a carpet store.

Now that I was in the tourist mood, we left the zoo and visited the nearby Bowers Museum. Inside the museum, large black letters on the wall proclaimed “The Legacy of Spider Woman.” We ventured into a display of Navajo weavings. Navajo legend has it that Spider Woman had charge of teaching Navajo tribes the art of weaving.

One rug called the “Two-Face Weave” became the emblem for our vacation. On one side was a beautiful and intricate design; the other side was of a simple weave, but equally lovely. Same rug, different patterns on each side. Quite a weaving accomplishment.

I began to appreciate that our lives were like that, alternately complex and simple, but elegant if we kept our eyes on its complete pattern. If we invite the surprising, the unexpected elements, into our lives, we’ll see a completely new pattern in the same cloth.

After examining that graceful design, I felt I had seen a powerful Michelangelo sculpture, had absorbed the effects of something artistic, therefore miraculous.

On Sunday afternoon, we continued our sightseeing. We visited Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary with its hummingbirds and squirrels. At one time the Tuckers had maintained 200 feeders around their simple wooden house in Modjeska Canyon. Later, on the way home, we stopped by Laguna Beach for an hour to visit its tide pools and enjoy the ever wonderful salt air and ocean roar. A petite 3-year-old, her bathing suit the color of a hummingbird’s ruby throat, darted to and from the waves, squealing “Momma!” at a young woman underneath a pastel beach umbrella. I know our vacation was working when I could sit complacently among sprawled beachgoers and later still feel relaxed in Coast Highway congestion.

We discovered we did not have to wait for a large block of time to take a vacation. At least not our “backyard” variety. Of course, we’ll still go to the Grand Canyon. We also have in mind a bed-and-breakfast trip to the Swiss Alps and Norwegian fiords. But we found that we could also renew our “visitors’ ” eyes right here at home--and in doing so appreciate the other side of our two-face weave.