Terri and Peter's RV Adventures

A few weeks shy of eight years ago, I took a trip with our synagogue to Israel. It wasn’t the usual touristy trip; it was a “spiritual” trip. In fact, it was called, “Life of the Spirit” and was led by our senior rabbi, a former rabbi turned tour guide and our spiritual guide, Danny Cohen; someone I describe as thirty years old in body and 30,000 years old in spirit. (Wait, this will be relevant to today if you can hold on for a few short paragraphs.)

After a very long flight from San Francisco to Tel Aviv, we landed in pitch dark. Boarding a bus, we drove for another two hours in the dark. We arrived in the Negev desert town called Mitzpe Ramon, a place none of us had heard of. I awoke at sunrise to a most spectacular sight: a red orange glow rising from the sandy horizon, desert palms, sparse and exotic and I felt I’d been transported back in time to the ancient days.

After breakfast, we gathered at the edge of a massive, expansive desert canyon called the MachTesh, akin to our Grand Canyon but more single toned beige. We were awe struck at the sight and could sense our ancestors trekking across this sandy desolate place looking for home. Danny’s first advice to us was to leave our phones and cameras in our backpacks. Scan the horizon. Look all around. Be mindful and commit the image to memory. No phone. No picture. Our minds could serve as a visual reminder of this place.

I’ve not forgotten that advice. Sometimes cameras or phones detach us from an experience as we rely on them to trigger memories down the road. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s also something special about putting the phone or camera down and soaking in an experience with all your senses.

Ok, here’s how that’s relevant today. We left our private, sweeping lush green field of a campground in Vernon, NY and headed through Utica and Albany, over the wide, brown roiling Hudson River and its attendant valley of rolling greenery into western Massachusetts. Past the famous Tanglewood, an outdoor summer music venue, more trees baring newly birthed chartreuse leaves, and gently rolling hills. Approaching Springfield, we headed north/north east, past Amherst to our new home for the next two days, Bernardston, MA and Traveler’s Woods Campground. I picked it for its relative proximity to my younger brother’s home, about 30 minutes away in the big (not) town of Montague.

His name at birth was Bill/Willie. In adulthood he changed it to Will and in his later adulthood it’s Karun Das or KD. KD met us soon after we arrived and we spent the afternoon eating lunch, lounging in our outdoor chairs, throwing balls to Lily across the vast expanse of green grass and catching up on a wide range of issues: our memories of road trips as children, the Vietnam War and the draft, protests in Chicago’s Grant Park, music and much more. I was so caught up in the moment of our time together after not seeing him for two years, that taking photos—of him, us, our conversation pit, Lily running, the surrounding campground—never came to mind. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have photos.

After a relaxing afternoon under our awning to mitigate the mid-70’s sun, drinking cold sparkling water and hot tea, we left for the closest big town of Greenfield. The first three restaurants we tried to have dinner were closed (it’s Monday) and we landed at an Indian place which was delicious and perfect.

Tomorrow promises to be a full day.

Imagine lush green stretches of open grass; no other campers anywhere near us, Lily racing unrestricted through this grassy area and otherwise the solitude of the wooded, gentle hills of Western Massachusetts and the New England style of country houses, white clapboard with black trimmed windows, mostly two story but generally on the smaller side. Endless country two lane roads winding in and around the woods past occasional creeks with no sense of grid, and that’s where we are.