It's that time of year again...
I'm heavily in the throes of trip-planning for my fall hejira across the nation for Duke. It occurred to me that I'm always taking photos of other campuses, and I never take photos of the Duke campus, which is quite beautiful in its own right. So here are a few I snapped on our campus yesterday as I was walking to my car.
Every summer about this time, I start the excruciating process of planning my fall trips all over creation. I will be gone from right after Labor Day, on September 8th, until early December with only a Thanksgiving break. I will only be home in North Carolina for a total of 8 days, (5 of which are weekend days.) I'm usually gone three or four weeks at a pop, and then I'm only home a day or so and right back at it again.
While I wind up seeing some fascinating parts of the country, I do miss home. I'm essentially a home-body, so I have to muster up my strength to get myself psyched for this peripatetic lifestyle that awaits me.
This year, I'll be traveling to some familiar places, but I'll also see some new sights which I'm excited about: for example, I'm building into my trips this year some good forestry schools, and so one of them I'll be seeing is Humboldt State University, up in the far north coastal region of California, where the redwood trees live. (It's also earthquake and tsunami territory, mind you!)
I'll be visiting Washington state, Oregon, California, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Alabama, Louisiana, Colorado, Minnesota, Virginia and Tennessee this year. 
I have never been to Alabama or Louisiana before, and I'm already primed for new adventures. It should be a wild ride, and I hope you'll stay with me for some of it. I'll try to take photos as I see interesting things. I will also try to sketch, nights in hotels, when I can. 
In the meantime, I no longer work from home when I'm not on the road--I'm commuting in to Duke every day, so here and there, I'll have to try to take some Duke campus photos when I AM home! It's a lovely campus, and deserves my attention.
When my son Eric was looking into colleges, I arranged for the track coach at Duke to meet with Eric, hoping I could entice him to go to school here in North Carolina. Eric was a strong cross-country runner, and I figured if he liked what he saw, maybe it would convince him to stay here nearby. They did hit it off, and Eric really loved the Duke campus architecture as we wandered the campus, but ultimately, he decided to go to Williams College in Massachusetts, which is a wonderful school. It was a great choice for him, but I did my best to keep him near me, honestly, I did!! He's very smart, and I knew he'd get in wherever he applied, but Williams was a great "fit" for him.
I really do get to see many beautiful places in the course of my travels, and I'm fortunate, but I will be exhausted by the time Christmas rolls around again this year. 
And every year, as I see the day lilies stop blooming, and the end of my hydrangeas, I get a knot in the pit of my stomach, realizing it's all starting over again, and for me, at least,--summer is almost over. I am definitely in "Trip-planning Mode." Bear with me!"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." (-Robert Louis Stevenson)
