The Eye Must Travel

During the school year I spend the greater part of each Friday writing. I’m militant about it. I decline coffee and lunch invitations, schedule doctor and dentist appointments on other days, and don’t run any errands. While the boys are in school I write and write and write, taking advantage of my one full day off from work to catch up and get ahead [for the record, I never actually get ahead].

For the next eight weeks or so, though, the boys are home on my day off, so instead of writing, it’s Field Trip Fridays from now until mid-August.

I worried that I’d resent the lack of writing time, but just the opposite has happened, in fact. Not only do I love the freedom of a non-scheduled day, I find the adventures themselves often fuel the creative process.

We seldom wander far. One morning Noah suggested we take a picnic lunch to the park. Usually I would tell him no (I’m not the spontaneous sort, you know), but that Friday I packed a canvas bag of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fruit snacks, a nectarine and Capri Sun fruit punch and grabbed the red plaid picnic blanket from the basement. The three of us headed up the alley, down the gravel road and along the bike path toward the park.

“How about over there?” Noah suggested, pointing to a sprawling white oak on the edge of a grassy field.

I spread the blanket in the dappled shade, and we sat cross-legged in a circle, sandwiches on our laps. I sliced the nectarine and doled out disks of the ripe fruit. Noah leaned back on the blanket, arms behind his head. Rowan pointed out the painted lady butterfly flitting between stalks of prairie grass.

Last week we ventured a bit farther to visit a shrine that sits atop a prairie vista halfway between Lincoln and Omaha.

The boys and I spent some time in the church itself. They bent low over the stream that trickles down the nave toward the altar, and I prayed as we each lit a candle in memory of my friend Andrea’s dad, who had died the day before. Then we stepped outside, where rolling green met silver sky.

Noah spotted a switchback trail that crisscrossed down the hillside and around a pasture. We followed the path away from the soaring church, across a rickety wooden bridge and into an evergreen glade.

“Smell the berries, Mommy,” Noah urged as we stood in the dim cathedral, ground soft beneath our feet. I inhaled clean crisp from a spray of green. The three of us were quiet for a moment beneath the swaying trees before we made our way out into daylight again.

Our Friday Field trips aren’t fancy. They don’t come with a pricey admission fee or a lot of thrills, and we don’t wander far. But as Vogue editor Diana Vreeland once said, “The eye must travel.” I may not know where next Friday will take us, but one thing is for certain: our eyes will travel indeed.

Where are your eyes traveling this summer? Have you taken any field trips yet?

Linking up with Laura for her Monday Playdates with God.

And with Rachel at Finding Joy for her Friday Favorite Things.