Whew!

Just got home from a marvelous visit with friends back East! Being lazy, I haven’t quite unpacked all my clothes yet. And being overwhelmed in every good way by the trip, I haven’t unpacked all my thoughts about it either.

For now, I can share something like the ol’ quickie Five Cent Tour of these travels – and maybe one covering each of the five senses could capture things best!

TOUCH

So over the course of two delightful weeks, I drove (and was kindly driven by dear friends Dee and Jen) around Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And I got amazing looks at everything from nature at its most basic to civilization at its most extreme! It was a great chance to see some of the country from which Dad’s side of the family hailed and (being a big history nerd) to check out plenty of museums and historic homes – 

Which kinda makes the sense of touch difficult to cover… 

I mean, understandably, museums don’t want precious items to get worn or broken by boneheaded tourists (like the guy who just busted a crystal-studded chair in Italy). While the folks took us around museums when I was little, I’d clasp my hands behind me to show any blazer-wearing, stern-looking employees that I was behaving – and I still unconsciously do that!

I expect most of us learn the meaning of “don’t touch” pretty early. Although a toddler next to me on the outbound plane still needed periodic reminders from her dad:

“Don’t lick the window – that’s yucky!”

Again, I get it. So let me put a pin in this particular sense and circle back.

SIGHT

Well, the hard part for this sense is narrowing all the glorious sights down to these –

Being a lifelong fan of Mark Twain’s, it was a real thrill to visit his charming family home in Hartford, Connecticut!

Also in the Constitution State, I got to scramble (and duck) around an old whaling vessel at the Mystic Seaport Museum!

Nature-wise, Connecticut treated me to that magical natural wonder, the firefly! And in Massachusetts, I had to share the road at one point with a hefty, magnificent-looking black bear – to whom I granted any which right of way he desired!

In Newport, Rhode Island, I visited a coastal “cottage” called The Breakers (anyone watching “The Gilded Age”?). Built for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, it’s one of a collection of opulent homes known as the Newport Mansions. And it. Was. Stunning.

I strolled Washington Crossing Historic Park in Pennsylvania where on December 25, 1776, George Washington and his troops famously rowed across the Delaware River to secure a much-needed Revolutionary victory in the Battle of Trenton! 

And it was so moving to make a pilgrimage to Gettysburg National Military Park where a critical battle in our brutal Civil War played out over what’s now serene and sacred Pennsylvania landscape.

SMELL

Except for that Gettysburg leg, I never rambled far from the Atlantic coast and, as a result, I got to inhale the aroma of many a fresh seafood-y meal! But my favorite “catch of the day” was a whiff of air from off the ocean or one of its bays! Even if I wasn’t staring out at the waters over which my ancestors once sailed, it pleased me to know by the singular scent that I was very close by!

TASTE

So yes, it did seem a dirty – yet entirely necessary – job to consume lots of seafood on this excursion!

Over the course of many a tasty East Coast meal (mostly Italian), I got to sample:  shrimp to die for in Boston, Mass., a lovely crab sandwich in New Bedford, Mass.; chicken piccata in Providence, R.I. (yeah, not “of the sea”, but awfully good!); and salmon – whether seared, grilled or as pate – just about everywhere!

The grand “Taste Sense” prize, however, goes to (drumroll, please) – the lobster roll I had in Old Saybrook, CT! 

Actually, I’m told that would be the “Yankee” lobster roll, consisting of a fresh bun, a mess of delicate lobster and a trough of butter – and it was absolutely delish!

HEARING

The runner-up in this category has to be what I think is the collective hum of those periodically prolific bugs, the cicadas. Their buzzing crescendos and diminuendos accompanied many of the battlefield sites I visited and, in the absence of the haunting “Ashokan Farewell” tune from Ken Burns’s “The Civil War”, they went quite a distance in setting a melancholy tone.

Ah, but this contest was rigged from the start! In the early planning days, Jen wondered if I wouldn’t want to hit a concert at one of the Tanglewood music venues in Berkshire County, Mass. (summertime home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra). On the schedule during my visiting window was an afternoon mostly of pieces composed by Jean Sibelius, a native of Finland and favorite of Mum’s (her grandparents all came to the US from there)! And as I listened to his brilliantly performed violin Concerto in D, a breeze that stirred the leaves in nearby trees made me feel Mum was there with me, transported by the music too…

Okay so back to that “touchy” subject. I did come across all kinds of items I wanted to break the rules and touch – like I’d have loved to feel the texture of ornate furniture pieces, or peer through a spyglass once used for spotting whales, or pet a penguin at Boston’s New England Aquarium!

But, for the record – I did not.

There were two occasions though where, for safety reasons, touching was allowed. At Washington Crossing Historic Park, I wanted to get a bird’s eye view of the area from Bowman’s Hill Tower – and in a variation on the “Don’t Touch” theme, I found a sign indicating its elevator was “Out of Service” (because of course…). So I made the climb of 100-odd steps up a steep, tightly spiraled staircase, holding onto the railing as I’d been encouraged to do by the ticket seller out front.

And within the home of Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), we were instructed not even to take pictures, let alone touch anything. The one exception was the beautifully crafted and polished wood staircase railing which we were invited to use as we headed to the second floor. Even though I felt steady enough, I couldn’t pass up the chance to make some kind of contact with the house of a great author – just in case it could turn lightning bugs to lightning!

While there wasn’t much to report in literal terms, so many moments on the trip were “touching” in the spiritual sense: hearing music that connected me to Mum’s roots; seeing where Dad’s Civil War idol, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, held fast with his men of the 20th Maine; imagining the very first time Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was heard; and gazing at the desk where Sam Clemens penned the adventures of one Huckleberry Finn.

That’s just to name a few! For two weeks in a region new to me – and while enjoying the warmth and generosity of wonderful friends – I got to explore the scope of human experience from the heights of excess to the last full measure of devotion.

Yup, it was an amazing journey – in every sense!

Cheers!