Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.
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In response to a warm tide of readers expressing disappointment that my weekly column recently cut back to every other Friday, henceforth I will select one of my old columns – let’s call them vintage – from the archives to fill this space between new offerings. The one originally ran in October of 2010.
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Google Maps was of no assistance when I was recently lost for well over an hour inside a corn maze – a maize maze, if you will.
Exploration Acres in Lafayette is billed as “Indiana’s Largest Corn Maze” with more than 8 miles of paths. I’ll take their word for it, although to me it seemed no less than 20 winding miles of dead ends. When I finally escaped – from the Entrance, not the Exit, I must confess – I had a strong craving for cheese.
I also had a reminder that we often take things in our own backyard for granted. Most of the fellow mice I met in the maze were tourists and it struck me the locals were missing out on this Midwestern fun.
The bucolic beauty surrounding the maze drove this point home. Autumn’s change of colors was in full glory, the trees ablaze in rainbows of golds and oranges and reds. I spent my first 12 years of life in the Midwest – Ohio – but this honestly felt like the first time I had witnessed fall’s pageantry of watercolored leaves.
As the late British philosopher Bertrand Russell observed: “In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
The change of colors made me hang a question mark on my backyard that is Ventura County and the Gold Coast. How many things do I – and perhaps you, likewise – take for granted here, from the scenic sights to historical sites; from entertainment attractions to recreational adventures?
To list one local gem of a destination such as the San Buenaventura Mission or Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is to omit myriad more. And that doesn’t touch on natural wonders like our harbors and Lake Casitas and the Los Padres National Forest, to mention but three. Suffice to say, many of us too often take our backyard for granted unless we have out-of-state visitors to show around.
Perhaps the brightest Gold we ignore is our Coast itself. Because we can go to the beach in mere minutes, and with ease, we often put off doing so until tomorrow, next weekend, when summer arrives. Meanwhile, others drive for hours, even fly across the country or further, to vacation on our beaches and play in our surf; to take a boat to the Channel Islands; to marvel at our sunsets that would make Monet misty-eyed.
Sometimes you need to get away from what is special to fully appreciate it. I recall last Thanksgiving when we joined my wife’s side of the family at a beach resort timeshare in Mexico they all go to annually. It was our first time, and over and over we kept hearing about the spectacular ocean sunsets we were going to be treated to.
“Ooh! Aah!” the others marveled each evening as the sun sank, sank, sank and disappeared over the horizon.
Ho-hum thought my wife and I, unimpressed because the sky didn’t change colors like a kaleidoscope, like a nautical version of autumn trees in the Midwest, as is the habit on our Gold Coast. Nor was there an island silhouetted in the background to add dimension and further beauty.
Even being lost in a corn maze was a more memorable.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.
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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.