With the arrival yesterday of uncommonly cool air to chill the summer’s hitherto torrid temperatures, and with the advent of predictable seasonal change accelerated (as we dolefully discovered last evening while sitting on the balcony after dinner) by the already diminishing daylight hours, dreamy Canadian thoughts of winter travel have begun to overtake the calendar.  This morning at the hospital I spoke with a nurse who gleefully informed me of a southern expedition freshly planned for January. For the moment at least it appears that predominantly important family considerations with grandchildren and grandparents persevere on the diary; viz., the customary rituals of Santa Claus and Christmas though I have to wonder just how long these fables and myths will survive upon their own potency among an increasingly learned population.  If they do at all, it speaks either to the incontrovertible value of fiction or to the digestible nature of pretence and deceit if sufficiently imbued with the threat of dread or ambivalent necessity.

Speaking of dread and barring news of hurricane damage, for many the signal travel ambitions include Florida, Mexico (Punta Cana and the Mayan Riviera), Central America (Costa Rica and Panama), the Caribbean (The Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, Haiti, Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat and St. Lucia) or South America (Aruba, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires).  Others will choose to venture further abroad to Malta, Portugal, Hawaii or Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia).

Most (especially young working couples) will prefer a closer jaunt usually for one or two weeks, very often “all-inclusive” (which thankfully I have never had to measure for its token adequacy). It is practically assured that wherever one is travelling, if it involves airports, expect annoyance. Air France or the Saudi Sky Team may be exceptions. The prospect these days of going anywhere warm by train is almost unimaginable.  For those wintering in the southern climes of North America, the option exists to have one’s vehicle delivered by transport trailer.

For the past decade we have conditioned ourselves to bare the deprivation of exotic travel, preferring instead to motor quietly (and slowly) to our USA destination (which often amounted to a second home).  Years beforehand we were among those working stiffs who travelled infrequently and briefly to evidently alcoholic resorts located in precipitously tropical environments. When we were young (and able to smoke cigars and cigarettes with impunity; when alcohol was a noontime additive to brighten the poached fish beside the glistening emerald waters on a white sandy beach) the adventure was an indisputable pleasure. Now however we have withdrawn from the retail holiday market within the sumptuous hotels and prefer instead a restful home setting of our own manipulation. And, yes, we’ve quite smoking and drinking.

As lately as this morning our neighbour echoed this similarly melancholy demeanour by blankly suggesting that she and her husband have furthermore grown tired of the long-term southern travel enterprises. I suspect it is but another consequence of aging; namely, the old dog doesn’t want to remove itself from an already comfortable recline. The limitation is pragmatically enhanced by mounting health insurance costs which for the moment we’ve succeeded to divert by adopting instead a 40-day qualification which is repetitive throughout the year so long as one returns to terra firma transitionally. This coming year for example (the first we’ve employed this particular agenda) we have two days in Canada between trips.

Glancing meditatively across my desk upon the wavering field of soy bean and the choppy water on the river, it poses an amusing reflection of more than purely philosophic merit to consider a qualified winter resort. Accustomed as we are to having to arrange winter expeditions a full year in advance, the issue is currently one without urgency. But it is an investigation by no means strictly purposeless. Nor, may I add by contrast, is the contemplation without its favour. Admission of advancing age is not entirely metaphorical; that is, the reality is by some estimates debilitating. For example, no longer am I comfortable riding a bicycle; and, while even a tricycle is an accommodation, the further encroachment is that I haven’t the strength or capacity to cycle as far as I once loved to do, going up and down the sandy plateaux of Hilton Head Island or Daytona Beach Shores or the undulations of Amelia Island or the entirety of Jekyll Island or Longboat Key. Removing this corollary atmosphere is not the answer to the commensurate evaporation of other features. Immobility, like any treacherous undertaking, is best fully considered before summarily dismissed. It is my conclusion, perhaps aided in this calculation by only Nature’s intuition, that an abbreviation of one is an abbreviation of all. As I descend in my own way to the landing field of necessity, I am once again inclined to adopt the incontrovertible foresight of my Sergeant-at-Arms.  It would be preposterous to insist upon preserving inviolate the mandatory shifts of time.

Meanwhile I have condensed my erstwhile foibles, platitudes and vulgarities (embellished quite literally with argentum lustre) to inhabit a new and emerging world. The submission to this moderated existence is no less significant than the physical and chemical properties of silver which correspond to its two vertical neighbours in group 11 of the periodic table; namely, copper and gold. Silver is as well “a soft, white, lustrous transition metal, (which) exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and reflectivity of any metal”, in all what I feel are sizeable recommendations.