Ditching Stress — An experiment

by Andrea Gross

This is the year I diet. Not by going low-cal: been there, done that. This year I'm going low stress. I'm cutting down on stress as surely as last year I cut down on carbs.

It won't be easy. Stress gives me the same high as chocolate and, try as I might, I can't see the glory in taking a vacation in order to relax. But magazines say it's healthy to turn off your mind and revel in doing nothing. I spent 10 years writing for these magazines, so I have a hard time believing them, but what the heck....If Obama can spend an hour a day playing basketball, I can spend a week a year de-stressing. (This works out to Obama being approximately 168 times more important than I am, which seems to me, if anything, an understatement.)

But it's a concept that comforts me during my first hour on the beach. I'd prepared well — brought along a beach chair, towel, sunscreen, hat, snacks, and Wally Lamb's 752-page book, The Hour I First Believed, which proves to be too heavy to hold without straining my wrists. I put down the book and wish I had my computer, the nifty laptop that miraculously connects to the web even in the middle of nowhere. But I left it home, in deference to a hubby who said that after forty years of marriage he deserved four days of Nothing to Do.

I even left my cell phone home. Well, I'd cheated a little on this point. I traded mine, which rings or vibrates with comforting regularity — see, I am important — for my dad's. His never rings because he won't turn it on. "It's only for 911," he says. So I brought along his phone and gave the number to my four kids, so I could maintain the fiction that, in case of real emergency, one of my nearly-forty year old kids call for Mommy. Everyone else, I figured, could wait. I'm not that important, after all. I can check out for a week, and the world will still turn.

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Zen and the Art of Doing Nada

by Ellen Barone

Not too long ago, I was chatting with a guest in the lobby of the Inn on the Alameda, where I love to stay in Santa Fe. Perhaps some of you know her: 30-something, Pilates lean, size zero designer jeans, stylish hair cut, perfectly nice. When conversation turned to travel, as often happens in hotels, she told me that she and her husband had recently returned from an African safari. "Sure, the wildlife was awesome, but what they don't tell you," she said, "is that there's a lot of down time with nothing much to do. Four hours a day, at least," she said, "to entertain yourself with no gym, no Internet, no TV, no cell coverage."

So there I was, in my not-even-close-to-size-zero Patagonia quick-dry travel pants, snuggled in front of a flickering piñon fire, quite prepared to do absolutely nothing for the evening, wondering if I should admit to this kind stranger that my favorite part of any vacation is her dreaded down time.

In fact, I confess, one of my favorite escapes was a month spent doing nada at a friend's no gym, no Internet, no TV, no cell coverage, Mexican beach casita. I like to think of myself as an adventuresome sort, the kind of gal that says yes to rappelling down 9,000-foot mountains, yes to a 2-week camel trek across the Moroccan Sahara, yes to cycling up a rumbling Mount Etna, yes to sailing across the Atlantic, and have in fact done all of the above. But, to my ego's horror, I have come to discover that I am, in all honesty, an A-plus student of doing nothing. I can hang-ten in a hammock, watch butterflies, swing in a porch swing, listen to surf and read 17 books in one month, with the laziest of them.

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Nature Nurtures In The Amazon

by Dale V Atkins

I just returned to Manaus from the Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge in the Amazon (actually on the River Negro which is indeed a black river not due to dirt but due to tanens from leaves and organic matter and has NO mosquitoes at all on the water...unlike the "muddy river" which has apparently has PLENTY.) Did I really need those malaria pills?

It is unbelievably wet there....it is not called a rain forest for nothing..You cannot go out for 10 minutes without a rain jacket unless you don't mind consistently walking around looking as if you just lost the jungle wet tee shirt contest. I opted for the rain jacket (which doubled as my icebreaker a week ago when I was marching around in crampons on the Moreno glacier in Argentina but let's stick to one rain jacket adventure at a time.).

Just so you know, before I go any further, I am as happy as I can be. I look just like a hairdresser's nightmare (or dream depending on your point of view) as my roots are huge and my curls are wilder than in the '60s. It is good that HAIR has returned to Broadway because I may go directly from the plane to a casting call. Truth is, as soon as I land, I am going to the grandkids to give and get some great hugs and smooches followed immediately by an appointment with the hairdresser.

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A year on the Ground

by Sallie Bingham

2009 is the year I decided to stop flying.

Not flying in my imagination, or flying down a mountain on skis, but flying on the hideous US airlines, dealing once again with the insane security regulations, the rudeness of airline emplopyees, the escalating costs, now compounded by charges for luggage, the endless waits, the numbing cancellations, the refusal to grant travelers even basic amenities like pillows and free peanuts....

So, I will not fly this year. After all, we can stilll remember when we used to drive and take trains; we still have cars and Amtrak still manages to cripple along. So there are alternatives to the gross mishebenavior of the commercial airlines. Why not try them?

Expense? Probably. This will be one of the things I'll track: gas has gone down again, motels are not expensive, meals on the road can (perhaps) be cheap.

Time? Certainly. But what are the pay-offs? A closer relation to the landscape? The opportunity to meet, and talk with, strangers? A better understanding, even, of that mysterious entity, our continent?

Relationships? Strained by extended time together in a car or a train compartnemt? Probably. But, again, what are the rewards?

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Staying home for the holidays

by Judith Fein

What would happen if you stayed home, turned out the lights, turned off the tube, pulled your ipod out of your ear, unplugged the phone, turned off your cellphone, and just sat there? Would you think? Sit in silence? Be bored? Be inspired? Feel lonely? Be grateful? Yearn for conversation? Talk to yourself? Hum? Flash back to the past? Fast forward to the future? How long could you sit there without agita? Hmmmmm. Join the discussion!

Hanukkah Behind Bars

by Judith Fein

Christmas lights fringed the adobe walls in downtown Santa Fe, and I was feeling gloomy. In a few days I'd be leaving the country for a work assignment, and I wouldn't be able to celebrate the holidays with the kids behind bars.

For several years, I had volunteered to teach them creative writing, and I'd become very attached to them. In spite of their crimes, I loved them because they were just kids. Their life stories were punctuated with abuse, abandonment, and pain, and I knew their young hearts would ache with loneliness during the holiday season.

Impulsively, I called the head of the jail. He said I could have a special holiday session with the kids the following night.

Almost all of the Hispanic and Native American kids were Christians, and I wondered if any of them knew what Hanukkah was. I spent the next day buying plastic dreydls (tops) and gold-wrapped chocolate coins called Hanukkah gelt, and then I cut up more than 600 paper chits. In case my Hanukkah idea was a dud, I bought and signed Christmas cards for the kids.

As I was leaving for my Hanukkah mission, my friend Kitt arrived at my house with an enormous 50-pound pillowcase full of candy. "A little something for the kids," she explained.

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