Seasons of Travel

When the warm whispers of spring arrive, and everything is green and new again, I am so happy to be right where I am that traveling somewhere else never even crosses my mind.

But I must admit that when the sun begins to beat down a summer heat, my heart wanders to the prairies. I'm not sure why the change in weather creates that urge, but it does. Perhaps because I always have that desire to return hidden deep within me, and because I've only ever been during the hot summer months, that type of weather pulls the desire to the surface. Nonetheless, my desire was satiated this summer with the glorious prairie sunset and sunrise on the Homestead.

Until next summer, of course.

The days are starting to get cooler. I've changed my daily shorts for jeans, though it's not cool enough for long-sleeved shirts yet. The leaves are still green. Still, with just a hint of autumn's crispness in the air, my heart has already gone wandering again.

In the fall, the Ozarks call out to me, beckoning. Again, I'm not sure why. I've been to Mansfield in the summer also, but perhaps because of all the no-longer-existent Rocky Ridge Days I used to attend in Octobers of not so long ago, I've come to associate it with that season. For whatever reason, although I love fall here too and it's every bit as beautiful as it is in the Ozarks, I'm unsettled unless I have a couple days in Mansfield. So I look forward to October when I can satisfy that longing.

Winter? No Ingalls urgings here. I hate winter. I hate snow and ice and cold. In the winter my heart yearns not for the haunts of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but for Mickey Mouse. :) I make my annual escape to Florida and soak up enough sun to survive the rest of winter.

So there are my seasonal travels. How about you? Does your mind turn to another place at certain times of the year? Where and why?