Vacation

I am just getting ready to go on my winter vacation and, as usual, a whole range of thoughts are swirling in my head and heart. The major thought is one that I am truly committed to.  It has to do with an article I read years ago about humans’ biological needs to ‘get away’ or as us modernists say ‘go on vacation.’  The article focused on our animal origins as beings of the forest, of the mountains, of the plains, of the jungles. Our early ancestors didn’t exactly get away.  They were in our view away but it was their norm. They were grazing, lazying about, climbing, walking, wandering.  And we homosapiens  have to do same.  We have just not evolved far enough  from our ancestors to be without these early experiences.  And so, vacations were created.  To bring us closer to our earlier natural environments.  Ashley Montague, one of my favorite  writers on “Man’s Early Origins’ is a huge booster for vacations, or just any get aways that take us back to the forests and the plains.  So, off I go, supported by a brilliant social anthropologist’s rationales and principles.  But not too far, as I will be checking my emails periodically.  I do love getting away and I love being in the middle of the action as well.  Can’t lose, either way.

Carol J. Trust