At over 60 degrees, it was unusually clear and sunny for this late in November in the Mid-Atlantic and I was still recovering from the mind-blowing experience of airplane rides, which not 24 hours earlier had ferried me at 38,000 feet from Santo Domingo to Philadelphia over the very same beach on which I then stood. So it was this kind of reflective, expansive mood I was in.
I'll come right out and say it, because this is the season for giving thanks: I'm fortunate. For lots of reasons and going over Thanksgivings past in my head I realized that since Thanksgiving 1997 I have not spent consecutive Thanksgivings in the same place.
Cooking this up for a blog entry, I resorted to the familiar formula of the list of locations I have spent the last 13 Thanksgivings dating back to 1997:
1997 - Boise, Idaho
1998 - Basking Ridge, New Jersey
1999 - Queechee, Vermont
2000 - Edinburgh, Scotland
2001 - Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
2002 - Aspen, Colorado
2003 - Lancaster, Pennsylvania
2004 - Cecilton, Maryland
2005 - Todos Santos, Mexico
2006 - Russian River Valley, California
2007 - Lake Tahoe, California
2008 - Vashon Island, Washington
2009 - La Romana, Dominican Republic
With the odd jaunt to Hood River, Oregon (~1993) I had spent nearly every Thanksgiving up to and including 1997 in my hometown of Boise, Idaho. Since then, I've shown a fearsome resistance to tradition by spending no-two Thanksgiving Holidays in the same place twice and without even meaning to built something of a new tradition.
Next year is virtually assured not to be a repeat of this year so the anti-tradition will live on another year at least.
