September 29, 2008 Addendum

I read an article today that pretty much sums up my feelings about travel. It told about a new Ken Burns project. For those that are unfamiliar with his work, Ken Burns is a film maker who has produced many landmark PBS documentaries on such topics as the Civil War, jazz, baseball, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mark Twain, Congress, WW II and the Brooklyn Bridge. This new project is called "The National Parks: America's Best Idea". Burns says that almost all of his work looks at the way American geography connects with the American character. I'm looking forward to the series. In speaking with the article's author, he describes his own first experience with the National Parks at Shenandoah National Park in VA.

"My family life was horrifically tragic," he begins. "There was never a moment when I wasn't aware that my mother was tremendously sick with cancer. I was told when I was 6 or 7 that she was going to die within six months. She died a few months short of my 12th birthday. I didn't have a childhood."

But one weekend when Burns was 6 or 7 and the family was living in Delaware, his father met him after school and drove young Ken to spend the night at his grandmother's house in Baltimore. The next morning before dawn, Burns' father woke him and they hopped in the car.

"We drove from Baltimore to Front Royal, Va., which is at the top of Skyline Drive, at the top of Shenandoah National Park," Burns recalls. "The Skyline Drive runs down the spine of the Shenandoah Mountains, and it is spectacular. We drove through tunnels, which I'd never done. We drove through clouds, which I'd never done. We saw deer on the road, which I had never seen. We saw a bear. We stayed in a little cabin, just my dad and me. We had a campfire. We took a hike to see a waterfall, which I had never seen. We turned over logs and saw these bright orange salamanders. And they scampered away, and I caught one.

But then he gets to the heart of the matter--what I tried to say in my own way earlier today.

"And I will never forget the thrill of it. ... It isn't just these places. It's who you see them with."