Field Trip Notebook – Page 3 – Former teacher, traveling full time and taking notes.

On the Gravitational Pull of Things

The plan is to travel. Our children are grown, and we’re coming up to our last day of working full time. To get out there, we’re renting out this house and unloading its contents, ready to step into the next season of our lives with lighter luggage.

So, we must deal with things.

I walk through the rooms of our suburban house and inventory the objects, organize them into stacks, plot their disbursement. Sometimes, in a burst, I’ll unload a great deal at once. Sometimes, objects persist.

For example, this gargoyle.

What Happiness Sounds Like (when it doesn’t take too much to make you happy)

We wanted someplace quiet on a recent weekend, so we headed for Thomas, West Virginia, a former coal-mining community that’s now finding a second life as a low-key retreat in the mountains.

A Trip to [a town near you]

Justin and I went to Fredericksburg, Virginia on a beautiful fall day a couple of weeks ago.

I fell in love.

*Foode, led by executive chef Joy Crump, in downtown Fredericksburg.*
*This charming building used to be a bank, complete with vault. Great food.*

Last Hack You’ll Ever Need for Dangling Backpack Straps

Fellow traveler, there can be a lot of small nuisances on our journeys, but dangling straps from your backpack does not have to be one of them. Travelers trade home comforts for the joy of the journey, so the things in that bag–and the bag itself–take on outsized importance.

Polly, Put the Kettle On (Or What the British Taught Me about a Cup of Tea)

“Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.”
arthur Schopenhauer

*My husband’s great-grandmother’s tea cup and saucer.*

Okay, you put the kettle on, and I’ll talk about tea.

The no-tour, DIY Itinerary for Hadrian’s Wall

[For why walking Hadrian’s Wall is a great idea, and why planning it yourself is an even better idea, read my post here.]

Truly, planning this inn-to-inn through-hike yourself is very doable and adds immeasurably to the pleasure of your trip. Here’s our full itinerary to get you started.

Three Tips to Love Your Hadrian’s Wall Walk, even if Things Go Wrong

(Read our DIY Hadrian’s Wall Itinerary here. Planning our itinerary ourselves was 100% worthwhile.)

Are you considering this walk? You’re right–it’s a great one. We just returned from Hadrian’s Wall, and here’s what went wrong (and right!), our top tips for YOUR trip, and our itinerary to get your planning started.

*The famous Sycamore Gap as seen from the west. [Update: The tree, tragically, is no longer there. But the sweeping views, the great people, the history…there are still so many reasons to go.* ]

12 Stops on my Book-Love Tour of New York City

I’ve been to New York City to see the big attractions and dazzling shows, but my trip last week was something quieter and so sweet: a book-love tour of Manhattan.

This trip was my own creation–self-guided, budget-friendly, and flexible enough for browsing, contemplating, reading, and writing. I missed a few gems, but I also stopped at a surprising number of great destinations in my few days in the city: seven book stores, three museums, and two libraries. I walked or took the subway everywhere. Each night I fell into my clean, no-frills hostel bed exhausted and happy. Can I recommend this 12-stop trip to my fellow book lovers? 100 percent. It was wonderful. Let’s start with the libraries, shall we?

This shirt is good enough.

“How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.” – Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

I’m not buying new things. My husband and I are deliberately sloughing off possessions. This task is hard enough without bringing in anything new.

But awesome travel stuff has its own siren song.

Dopp Kit

I’m carrying less these days.

My dad used to travel with a leather case for toiletries. The case itself was handsome and sturdy, but perhaps its greatest appeal was that it wasn’t big. What would fit in there? Just a few things. The essentials. He called it his Dopp kit.