Helen and I are leaving Humptulips County this afternoon for a trip by river boat through Eastern Europe. We are excited, nervous about airport security, but ready for an adventure to parts unknown – at least to us. We fly to Amsterdam where the cruise originates, a city unknown to Helen and visited once for most of a day by me while on a business trip. So I can’t say the city is familiar to either of us, although I do remember lots of bicycles piled next to the main passenger train station in the city center. Everyone else I’ve ever spoken to about Amsterdam clearly recalls the same pile. Helen and I will be looking for something more glorious to remember about the city, and will start looking by means of a canal tour on Thursday morning.
It’s a hard time of year to leave Humptulips County for other parts of the world. The weather here has been spectacular until late Sunday evening when it turned cold, rainy, and windy. That was probably the weather god’s way of attuning Helen and I to Amsterdam, for it, too, is rainy, cold, and windy and is forecasted to remain that way for our entire visit. This, and the remembered bicycle pile adjacent to the train station,are indications that Humptulips County is mobile concept, rather than a physical place.
Still, wherever Humptulips County may reside during the next month, the Farm will remain firmly anchored where it is and will serve as its focal point, cared for by a plethora of others who will enjoy the rest of its May days. We have a house sitter, a field mower, and a barn user to take the place of the two of us, to take care of our multitude of cats and love birds and to mark the days and nights, savor the evening shadows across the grass, enjoy time with a cup of tea on our front or back porches, read our books and enjoy our library, or otherwise sip of its ease.
I hope to post from the rivers of Europe on which our cruise takes place – the Rhine, the Maine, and the Danube. There is a possibility that the scenery will deny me the time to do so, and, if it does, I will not feel cheated or morose, for the sights will hopefully serve to give me new ideas, new insights, about man’s place on this Earth. For we are going to places far older in terms of human occupation than Humptulips County can boast. Â Western culture along these rivers is centuries old and rich in diversity of custom, language, religion, architecture, arts, and all of the other myriad attributes of humanity.
Leaving home is always a mysterious process for me – I want to go and see things I haven’t seen before, but I am always torn by leaving familiar comforts. I feel this way this morning, but once the dread of airport security is behind us, once the long hours of flight are over, once we have passed through immigration and customs at Schiphol Airport, once we are safely in the custody of our tour guides at the airport and bound for the ship, the adventure will have truly begun.
Neither of us can wait for things to begin. But we’re safe in the knowledge that the home fires will be kept burning by others on our behalf; safe in the knowledge that while the Farm is bigger than either of us, it is merely a geographical speck; safe in the knowledge that the comforts and concepts of Humptulips County are mobile, and will accompany us wherever we go.
