To my delight, Savannah lived up to its reputation of charm. As my brother and I walked the streets early in the morning, cameras in hand, exquisite houses presented themselves at every corner, as if permanently dressed for a debutant’s ball.
This, I had expected. What came as a delightful surprise was the green. The copious lavishness of green. The city planners, far ahead of their time, dictated that twenty four square parks be evenly set throughout the city so that no one would live more than two blocks from open space.
And because of that, Savannah could be called The City of Benches. I’ve never seen the likes of it. Not just public benches. (Forest Gump’s bench was famously set in Savannah.)
But private ones, as well, tucked onto porches and in quiet, semi-hidden gardens.
Within the green, like a kind of antebellum nesting doll, were the trees. Long-limbed live oaks, draped with Spanish moss.
And on those trees were the most fabulous of things, new to me: resurrection ferns. Dry and brown for long periods, they refresh to a brilliant green with rain.
What a perfect metaphor for vacation. We often frame vacation as a break from something. It’s just as much as a reconnect to something. Paul Theroux, the accomplished travel writer, put it well:
“Travel, which is nearly always regarded as an attempt to escape from the ego, is in my opinion the opposite: nothing induces concentration or stimulates memory like an alien landscape or a foreign culture.”
We spend much of our life making life manageable and predictable. Travel shakes us awake, reminding us that there is a world of surprises outside our little spotlight of focus. Another journeying writer, Pico Iyer, delights that the joy of travel is seeing everything in a different light. And from a crooked angle.
Which makes me thankful for this blog.
I realized in Savannah that this habit of sitting and noticing is the reason why my frequent travel hasn’t lost its ability to surprise. My benches give me the rain I need to keep my ferns regularly refreshed.
It’s what we all need: open space close to where we live.
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