The Long Way Through

I don’t think every trip has to be far away to be worth writing down. Sometimes the long way through looks like an hour down the road. Sometimes it looks like a lodge room at Montgomery Bell State Park, arriving a little after 8 p.m., discovering the pool is too crowded, and deciding that’s perfectly fine because you have something better to do anyway. You can stay up too late giggling and talking with your sister. And sometimes, that’s the whole point.

My sister took me to Montgomery Bell State Park in Burns, Tennessee, for my birthday. It was one of those gifts that, on paper, might look rather simple. An overnight stay. A little hiking. Some good food. An antique store. A trip into town. But I have come to believe that some of life’s most meaningful gifts are the ones that don’t look like much from the outside.

We stayed at the Lodge and had their continental breakfast the next morning. She bought me a Sasquatch shirt, which admittedly is something I was quite overjoyed about. We hiked the Wildcat Trail. We wandered into Dickson and found the cutest little antique store, Yesterday’s Treasures. It was enormous—over 10,000 square feet—and somehow still felt like a treasure hunt. There was even the sweetest little outdoor patio area. Then we wandered down to Dickson’s precious downtown square. We ate at Boardable 615, where we ordered a mocktail called the Dry Dock Colada that tasted something like a non-alcoholic key lime pie in a cup. We shared pimento cheese, served with warm bread, which was such a small detail and such a lovely one.Our server was incredibly sweet. I ordered what they call the half-and-half: half a sandwich and half a soup. The sandwich was their Whiskey Bacon Grilled Cheese, which our server told us was her favorite. She was right. But the tomato bisque? I think it may have been the best tomato soup I’ve ever had in my life.

We left full and happy and satisfied. Naturally, we needed frozen Cokes to properly finish the day. None of this sounds particularly extraordinary. That’s exactly what I want to remember. Because travel isn’t always about extraordinary. It’s about attention. It’s about noticing the warm bread. The antique-store patio. The way your sister laughs. The little Sasquatch shirt. The fact that you can sit across from someone you’ve known almost your entire life and somehow still find things to talk about until way past bedtime.

It’s about realizing that a place doesn’t have to be far away to feel like a getaway. And maybe that’s because the real destination wasn’t Montgomery Bell at all. It was time. Time tucked away with my sister. Just the two of us. We are two years apart. She’s the oldest. And somehow, all these years later, we have had the privilege of being best friends in addition to being sisters. When we were younger, people often asked if we were twins. That doesn’t happen quite as often anymore. But she and I still operate on much the same wavelength. We can communicate whole conversations without saying a word. We can look at each other across a room and know exactly what the other one is thinking.

There are people who charge you. There are people who drain you. Then there are people who are such an intrinsic part of you that they feel more like an extension of yourself. She is that kind of person to me. I don’t know how God decides your siblings. I don’t know what the world would call me lucky for. I don’t enter many sweepstakes. I don’t play the lottery. But in the sister department? I hit the jackpot. I can’t answer for her aptitude or her level of capability as an employee, wife, or mother, but I can tell you this:She’s a grade-A, top-shelf sister.And these days, we are in a strange season of life where we don’t get to be in each other’s presence nearly as much as we’d like.We live about an hour apart.We each have families.We each have full lives and full calendars and people who need us and places we need to be.

There are seasons when you can go longer than you’d like without sitting across from the people who know you best. But when we finally do get together, we just pick right back up. No catching up required. No awkwardness. No finding our way back to each other. We simply continue. Maybe that’s because we carry each other with us. She’s in the laugh lines around my eyes. She’s the reason I like mushroom knickknacks. She’s in the recipes I make because they remind me of her. She’s in the songs I sing with my kids. She’s woven into every childhood story I tell. She’s in so many of the ordinary things that make up my life that sometimes I forget to notice just how much of her is there. Until we get a little time together. Then I remember. I think that’s part of what I’m trying to say with this little travel blog of mine. I believe traveling isn’t about how far you go or how fast you get there. It’s about paying attention. About choosing presence over proof. About letting places change you instead of trying to consume them. As I’ve come to know, the richest moments rarely make it onto itineraries. They happen in conversations. Shared meals. Missed trail blazes. Antique stores. Frozen Cokes. Late-night laughter. And the spaces in between. We don’t have to cross an ocean to travel. Sometimes we just have to get out of our usual rhythm long enough to notice what has been there all along.

A sister. A trail. A little Tennessee town. A really good bowl of tomato bisque. A few hours that didn’t belong to anyone else. A reminder that the people we love are not guaranteed unlimited access to our calendars. And that sometimes the most important places we go are the places that give us back to one another. We take the long way when we can—not because it’s efficient, but because it’s human.

And this trip? It wasn’t far. It wasn’t extravagant. It probably wouldn’t make anyone’s list of the world’s great adventures. But it was precious. It was a treasure. And I’m learning that those are the adventures worth documenting, too. Because as I often say, travel isn’t always about miles. Sometimes it’s about meaning. Sometimes the long way through is simply the road that gives you a little more time with someone you can’t imagine your life without.