The Great Texas Road Trip Thank You Tour: 1. The Purpose of Vacations Is Not to Relax; It’s to Slow Down Time, and Thus Prolong Life—Or at Least Our Perception of It

Marci makes lunch at a rest stop in the Texas Panhandle.

Robert Venturi died recently.  He once wrote, “I am for messy vitality over obvious unity.”  Perhaps I am too.  But not Marci—at least when it comes to a well-packed car.  And for that I am grateful.  This trip was very different than other Texas road trips I’d taken, especially ones I’d taken by myself without the organizational skills of others.

I remember one trip I took to Sea Rim State Park, south-west around the curvature of the Gulf Coast from Port Arthur, Texas.  I really didn’t pack the car at all before I set out from Dallas because I never really unpacked it from the previous trip, which, if memory serves me right, was to the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma.  So, I just tossed some clothes, a cooler, and some canned food in the trunk of my car, and off I went, headed east into the steamy woods.

When I got to Sea Rim in the late afternoon, I was dismayed to discover that although I had a tent, I had no tent poles.  Lucky for me, there was a good steady breeze coming in off the ocean.  I seriously doubted it would work, but because I didn’t have any other option, I decided to face my tent towards the sea, leave all but the screen door open on the front end, and let the wind fill it up.  Because I had an old-style tent normally held up by two poles, one at the front and one at the back, open only on one side, surprisingly, it worked.  If I had a dome tent with rain fly, I would have been out of luck.

What is more surprising is that the tent stayed up all night and into the next morning when I packed up to leave.  The wind never stopped, nor did it become so strong as to whip my tent away.  It was just a constant hot presence.

I don’t remember the trip extremely well, but I do remember at dusk millions of mosquitoes moved in.  I ran for my tent, wearing swimming suit only, unzipped it as fast as possible, climbed back in, and zipped it right back up.  Within those 30 seconds the tent filled with hundreds of mosquitoes.  I spent the next hour squashing the little buggers with my shoe.  In the morning, I woke up and found much of my tent speckled in red.  Later the blood splats turned black, and for years, I remembered that trip every time I went camping, climbed in for the night, and saw the dark splattered blood marks where mosquitoes had once been.

What I didn’t put together until just now is both occurrences:  1) The wind was blowing hard enough and steady enough to keep an A-frame tent with no poles up all night long, and 2) there were millions of mosquitoes.  We have mosquitoes here at Dry Creek, but we never have them on breezy nights.  The wind must blow them all away.  So, considering that the wind at Sea Rim was steady and strong enough to keep my tent up all night like an air sock, and yet there were still millions of mosquitoes, I hate to image the carnage that would have occurred without the steady wind pushing them back into the salt marshes where they belonged.  Now that my mind has put those two events together, I simply cannot fathom what might have become of me without that wind.  Yet, of course, campers in east Texas must somehow survive such ordeals regularly.

We had our tent poles on this trip.  Thanks to Marci, we pulled out with everything.  She’d even prepared egg salad and put it in a Tupperware container to make egg salad sandwiches on the road.  I had done my part too.  I vacuumed and washed the car, spent two days packing, slow and methodical, to make sure we had everything.  Never forgetting that night at Sea Rim State Park, I packed three cans of Off.  Marci cries over even one mosquito bite, and for good reason, as she swells up mightily.  I even remembered an extension chord and power strip to keep phones and laptop charged when we were camping, although we never once used them.

This trip was unlike any other voyage I’d taken, which is why I’m taking the time to write about it.  I didn’t realize it until on the way back.  Usually, near the end of a journey, no matter how good it is, I’m worn out and ready to return home.  I expect that.  When the boys were young, we took a thirty day journey up the West Coast and then back down through the Cascades.  The last four days, we didn’t really see anything.  Our only goal was to get home.  We were sick and tired of setting up and taking down the tent trailer each night, of unpacking and repacking the van each morning, of having to fix breakfast and wash dishes each morning, knowing there were many miles to be conquered, many pictures to be taken, many pull outs—waterfall after damn waterfall—to see.

Even short, day trips wear me out.  Even after a couple hours of driving, I need a nap.  I have always put myself through the difficulties of vacationing for the long-term benefit, not for the relaxation.  I have always been aware that if it was relaxation one was seeking, one would just stay home, lounge around in pajamas, read books, watch TV, or just stare at the ceiling.  No, the purpose of vacations is not to relax; it’s to slow down time, and thus prolong life—or at least our perception of it.  The more we experience, the greater the variety of memories we have.  The greater variety of memories we have, the longer life seems.  This is because years of routine gets compressed into single memories.  No one remembers each day at the office, each day cleaning the house, or even each hour in the garden.  It is disruption that expands our personal narratives.  Vacations provide disruption without the severe consequences that addiction, affairs, lavish indulgences, such as buying that red-hot convertible or betting one’s retirement on black jack.  It is true having an affair will prolong your perception of time, especially when you realize you have lost everything that truly matters to you, and the only things that remain are your job, your bills, and the day to day drudgery that leaves you no time to sort through your bad choices and make sense of exactly what went wrong.

In an article for Psychology Today the writer Steve Taylor, author of Making Time puts it as follows:

The main reason why time goes so slowly for children is because their minds take in so many new impressions and perceptions. Children are experiencing the world for the first time, and perceive everything around them very intensely. Everything seems more real to them, fresher and brighter and more exciting.

But as we get older, we have fewer new experiences. We start to ‘switch off' to the realness of the world, as it becomes more familiar to us. As a result, our minds take in fewer impressions, and so time seems to pass more quickly.  (Taylor)

Vacations simply are the least harmful way to complicate our lives and thus extend our perception of them.  Somehow, instinctively, I have always known that.  When things become too routine, and years are flying by like sage brush out the passenger seat window, it’s time to hit the road.  It will take you a week to recover, but it will be worth it.  You will add a new link in your life time chain of memories, and normally, the only costs are the dragged out feeling and longing for your bed you feel towards the end and the realization you went over budget and will have to eat canned soup for the next two weeks to make up for it.

This trip was different though.  I realized that just after passing through Monticello, Utah.  I was looking north east at the gentle undulating red earth bean fields that slowly roll away towards Colorado from the high fan of the Abajo Mountains, known locally as the Blue Mountains—a landscape that if you mentally blot out the giant La Sal Mountains above Moab, does look similar to vast stretches of Texas—and I realized how light and relaxed I felt.  It seemed like years of angst that I didn’t even know I had just had somehow evaporated.  It felt as if some unseen load had been lifted by a benevolent hand.  I also had this incredible sense of accomplishment.  Why?  All we had done was take an eleven-day road trip to Texas.

It was at that moment I realized that is not what we had done at all.  At least not me.  What I had done was go on a pilgrimage.  This trip was like no other.  I set out only to slow down time and see some old friends and instead experienced some sort of renewal.  What I was feeling was the cleansing effect of rebirth.  It might not be a big transformation; it may not last; time will only tell.  But it was real.  I felt incredible at the point in the journey that experience taught me I should be worn out and determined simply to get back home to my bed.  

These posts will explore the journey to that moment of realization of I feel good, oh so good now.  The trip is over, but where the writing will take me, I'm not sure.  Nor do I really care.  Writing for me, like a good road trip, is not about destination, but instead what is experienced along the way.  Although Marci has definitely taught me to appreciate a well-packed car, like Robert Venturi, in most things, I am still for messy vitality over obvious unity.

Works Cited

Taylor, Steve. How to Make This Year Longer: Slowing Down Time in 2011. 1 January 2012. 26 September 2018. <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201201/how-make-year-last-longer>.