#1: Wonder of modern distances

This first mid-winter pondering focuses not on the great metric vs. imperial measurement debate (although through consistent exposure I begin to believe that metrics are a bit more worldly and modern). Instead, the focus is on the great miracle of our modern sense of distance. My ancestors no doubt spend ages over sea and land to settle in this country. I just finished reading Sena Jeter Naslund's book Ahab's Wife which is set in 19th century America. The book is fabulous for many reasons, but one thing that struck me was the amount of travel and communication the main character involved herself in and how arduous and uncertain it all was. She took months to travel from Nantucket to Kentucky. Letters were sometimes received annually. Her husband (the great Ahab from Melville's Moby Dick) was gone at sea for two years at a time! How impatient the modern world is in comparison with it's tweets and minute-to-minute expectations, deadlines, and updates. How intolerant am I of a marriage which at most has five or six week intervals of travel. How different distances are indeed.

Although I was shut in for a week of blizzarding here in DC last week, I was still able to call friends and family and even Skype overseas. After the snow passed, I had the great pleasure of visiting my folks down in Arizona for a weekend. Arizona! for a weekend. Uskumatu. I traversed an entire country in a day. I have an overseas marriage that I sometimes feel tests our limits of communication and makes intimacy difficult to maintain. Although we cannot overcome the distances of time (yet!), we can make video calls and yap for as long as we are able to stay awake.

Indeed the world has become so much smaller. And I am grateful of this modern-day wonder. Travel, discovery, and adventure can comfortably cohabit with the relationships and communities that remain most dear to my heart.

*As a postscript to this post (oh! a post postscript!), today was a red letter modern distance day. My husband plans to visit me again in March. Yes. We are thankful for Finnair in particular today.