Hail the staycation: Letter from the managing editor
July 28, 2009 by Erika Stutzman
Filed under Letters from the Editors, Perspective
All hail the mighty “staycation.”
Whether I’m a slave to the stinky economy or to the trends of our times, or both, my family traveled all of two hours by car for our main family vacation this year. We roasted marshmallows in a fire pit just an inch away on a map from our very own home, but we may as well have been on a different planet. We hiked mountains and jumped over little creeks, looking for deer and elk and bunnies: We spotted all of them. Suburbanites no more.
We slashed our grocery costs by planting a garden in our back yard, and spent the days peeking through leaves and shrubs to see what bounty awaited us.
The garden is a different world — filled with mysterious, alien-looking slugs and earwigs, but also an ever-changing abundance of surprise. Lift a giant leaf to observe a squash blossom, and poof! One day it’s a squash, ready for picking. Move a branch to observe the status of your perfectly round green tomatoes and poof! One day they’re red and ready to eat.
This was a daily adventure, and we never even left the house.
The more we embraced and enjoyed the local, glorious surroundings, the more I started to notice how the slow and steady pace of life was affecting our lives. We didn’t need to find a sitter for the kids as we headed out to our new favorite bistro, our patio table laden with tomatoes from our garden, bread from our oven and wine from our fridge. This particular summer was all about reminding ourselves that home is where the heart is.
I can’t wait to kiss the Great Recession good-bye, but its au courant lessons about simplicity and home should definitely endure.
— Erika Stutzman
erika@womensmag.com
