PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Many of us have put traveling on hold during the coronavirus pandemic. For good reason.

Better to be stuck at home than stuck somewhere else.

A piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday struck a chord with me as it advocated “dealing with wanderlust by looking backward.”

Backward at past trips you have taken and remembering the great experiences of those trips.

As the author, Danny Heitman, put it, “For homebound travelers, a glance at the road in the rearview mirror has pleasures of its own.”

Heitman continued:

“Last autumn, my wife and I traveled to England and France for our 25th wedding anniversary, a trip we almost didn’t take. There were a hundred reasons not to go, and we’d considered delaying our second honeymoon until this spring, but we went ahead anyway. Now, as a pandemic makes such travel impossible, we’re glad we took the plunge when we did.

“All of this came to mind a few weeks ago as I was clearing our household study so I could join millions of other Americans in working from home. That’s when I came across a thick manila folder filled with pamphlets, playbills and receipts from our trans-Atlantic idyll.

“Out spilled the store map from Harrod’s, the iconic London department store where we savored ice cream and tea on a drizzly October evening. A brochure brought me back to Samuel Johnson’s old house near Fleet Street, another favorite spot. A rail pass reminded me of our day trip to Paris—and of strolling arm in arm along a stone bridge crossing the Seine.”

For me, the good news of past trips is that my wife, Nancy, has been very good at taking photos that memorialize fond memories. Looking back at those photos these days is a great escape.

Similarly, daughter, Lissy, has done a great job of collecting photos and other memorabilia and binding them in books that on our coffee tables – but not just “sit;” we look at the grreat photos often.

So, if you, like me, are tried of being housebound, take the great escape of looking at photos of past trips. Revel in the memories.

Heitman closes with this:

“With jets grounded and itineraries dashed, prospective tourists can’t know for sure where they’re going or when they’ll get there. But in this peculiar pause, homebound travelers have a rare chance to think more deeply about where they’ve been.

“That’s a real gift, since technology has both enlarged our capacity to collect travel memories and indulge the backward glance.”