Where's My Luggage?

Vanished Into Thin Air

Hate me if you must, but no airline has ever lost my luggage.  When I drop off my bags at the entrance to the airport, they miraculously appear at my final destination.  Even the time I flew five flights in a single day (see “Swimming in Alphabet Soup” from February 2012), my suitcase showed up on the baggage carousel.  Granted, more often than not I carry on everything I need, and rely on the USPS to deliver a box of pre-shipped extras to my hotel in advance of my arrival so my odds of a successful reunion with my belongings garner higher returns.  Regardless, I pack frugally and travel similarly, so the contents of my baggage are critical, and having everything with me when I arrive allows my expeditions to begin immediately upon arrival.

Of course there was the one time my son left a book in the seat pocket.  He didn’t deplane, he just changed seats on the flight to help a family traveling together.  After takeoff when he went back to retrieve his book, the family had given it to the flight attendant.  The flight attendant gave it to the gate in Chicago before closing the doors, thinking it belonged to the previous flight’s passenger.  And from there, the book vanished.  The logical chain of events would be that the book went from the Chicago gate to a main location in Midway International Airport, then on to a central location for the airline.  Yet once the book left the plane, it dematerialized.  How exactly does that happen?

Did You Look In Alabama?

After visiting friends in Birmingham we decide to swing by a little store in Scottsboro, Alabama, featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Bill Geist profiled the little specialty shop where shoppers can find just about anything from swimming trunks to a wedding dress, with a wide selection of cameras, CDs, and a complete, all-weather wardrobe.  The Unclaimed Baggage Center sells just about everything the airlines have tired of possessing.  Vast lots of homeless suitcases with tragically abandoned, and occasionally outdated, clothing and assorted personal effects become thrift-shop fodder for us and we wander through the bizarre warehouse with no particular purpose.

Son #1 purchases his first thirty-five millimeter camera at the expense of its original sad owner who most likely has moved on to a digital version of his or her previous model.  Son #2 selects a brown, felt fedora appropriately labeled with the name of the movie character whose likeness often dons similar apparel.  As for me, I am content to bring home a few compact discs that have long since disappeared from music stores of soundtracks from movies that have long since disappeared from theaters.  Maybe one day when passing northward near Chattanooga, Tennessee, we again will dip into the plenty of abandoned possessions and begin a new chapter for otherwise homeless objects.  Perhaps we will find a missing biography of John Paul Jones last seen in the Windy City at gate A11.

Barren Trees

The Off Season

I noticed on a recent visit to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that I happened to arrive during the off season.  So what’s the “on season?”  Like most national parks, crowds flock to the Great Smokies during the summer because that happens to coincide with the peak vacation season in America.  Not that the national parks have a monopoly on summer, but if you have ever driven through Yellowstone in July, you might find traffic – actual bumper-to-bumper traffic – much like you would see in line for the Matterhorn at Disneyland or along the National Mall in Washington, DC.  Cruises to Alaska, camping in Wisconsin, and road trips to practically everywhere commence as soon as schools conclude.

Between Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Cherokee, North Carolina the highlights don’t end just because Labor Day arrives.  Peak season number two begins when the leaf peepers hit the road and marvel in the rich colors that coat the Appalachian range.  Even the quaint Great Smoky Mountain Railroad increases its fares during October.  Yet, I still prefer to travel during the off season to avoid the crowds, but also to see the other vantage points of the scenery.  And while the landscape probably shimmers and glistens in its winter white, my season of choice fits none of the ideal, pastoral images.  I arrive on the cusp between winter and spring when the snow has melted, but the daffodils have only begun to think about blossoming.

Dormant

Hills and hills flow together along these state lines, much like they hugged the roads in West Virginia (see “Almost Heaven” from July 2012).  The ancient mountains have brought forth innumerous trees, the overwhelming majority of which are deciduous and in the waning winter days show their wear from each hard freeze.  The leaves, deposited months ago and packed against the earth, have long since sapped the color from the branches, and the woodsy colors now, mostly shades of brown, which in the sunlight lose any trace of color, cast grayness over each slope, as well as the next slope, and the slope after that.  Sporadically, a conifer boasts it bits of green among a forest of blandness.

Suddenly I realize, I don’t just belong here, I am here.  How often do I feel like these tall empty trunks, blown and ripped of the leaves I brought forth, the efforts I contributed, the bright color I shared with others?  Even when the autumn arrives, I vary my colors; I adapt and make the changes necessary to keep others engaged.  But like the wintered, weathered trees, I am left dormant, gray, and lifeless.  I wish my spirit had the hardiness of the pines to hang on to my little bit of green, to keep some visible signs of life about me.  Everything I have given has fallen off, been blown off, been stripped and picked off by the forces around me.  And don’t think these lifeless trees inspire me or invigorate me; they simply remind me of myself.  They, too, are standing, not hardly bending against the last huffs and puffs on the northern winds, because they have nothing left to lose, but to wait for a change – a warm wind – to blow their way.  Like me, they wait for something better to come along before they fall to the forest floor forever.

Just Passing Through

Not a Destination

I own a refrigerator magnet with the simple expression that reads, “Life is a journey, not a destination,” but that is not the only place I have seen this cliché.  Not that I would have any first-hand experience (wink, wink), but it often appears on online dating sites as a mantra for the “Live, Love, Laugh” singles.  It accompanies a lone hiker on the peak of a breath-taking mountain view on a t-shirt in a gift shop.  Sometimes, it is just mass-marketed on refrigerator magnets.  Nonetheless, for as overused as the thought is, it is also entirely accurate, and a truth I believe.

As children, or for some of us as late-in-life college students, we spend time contemplating what we want to be when we grow us as if once we actually perform that task or occupy that profession, we can put a check in a box that we have achieved what we set out to do.  I like to think that the end goal is always in flux and it morphs based on our changing perspective of our life story.  The more we write into our narrative, the longer and more exciting our journey, and our story, becomes.

More Clichés

Despite what another tired expression tells us, “You can never go back,” I want my journey to include encore performances of several states.  Often as part of a longer road trip, places like South Carolina and New Hampshire were part of the journey, but never the destination.  I would like to return to Oklahoma and have the experience be more than highway along my relocation from Arizona to the Midwest.  I would like to visit Chattanooga or Nashville or Memphis and see the details and learn the history of the Volunteer State.  I’d like Kentucky to mean more to me than the airport gateway to Cincinnati.

When I neared my goal of seeing all fifty states (see “Forty-Nine” from August 2012), I may have been just passing through Connecticut, but places along the road stuck with me, despite it being just a spot between New York and Rhode Island.  I recall the myriad of pumpkin patches and the autumn leaves dancing in the road (see “Ad Placement” from November 2011).  I noted the yard signs of importance to the residents of this in-between point in my travels (see “Breathing Windmills” from December 2011) and remembered more than my itinerary referenced.  I believe I owe the same consideration and insight to the five other states that were less of a destination and more of a blur in my journeys.  I’ll be back.