Captain’s Log: Stardate 220305

Yesterday I woke in the front room of a friend’s travel trailer in Study Butte, with other friends close by. Today, I wake in my own bed. There are grandkids on the front room floor with their mother asleep in the upstairs guest room. The friends have returned to their separate lives and I to mine. Today we begin the birthday celebration for the youngest. There will be cake. It will be fun.

Yesterday, was a hard travel day. Five and a half hours from Study Butte to Ozona, two and a half hours from Ozona to Johnson City. Luckily, I only needed to drive the second half. I was a resting passenger for the first leg. Still, I was tired when I arrived home to greet the grandkids who showed up shortly thereafter. Luckily, they’re little and hotdogs with chili and chips constitute a gourmet meal. We did it.

We closed out the evening watching pictures of my trip flash across the screen, and everyone agreed that Santa Elene canyon was a place worth a revisit. The daughter and her brother, in fact, talked about a river canoe trip, the same sort their mother and I used to make although we mostly confined our canoeing to the Guadalupe back in the days before inner tubes covered it like lily pads on a still lake. Carrying on like that seemed a fitting end to my most recent trip, because it says good things about tomorrow.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale