Travel Tale

By Courtney Pierce

Photo: Clash of the Titans

My 13-year-old stepdaughter rebelled about our recent move to Kalispell, Montana. She didn’t want to leave her friends, nor did she want to have to attend a new school. All her insecurities released like the Kraken. She even accused us of “ruining her childhood.” Personally, I love to relocate. It's a chance to explore, meet new friends, and break out of stale routines.

Then I told her what I did in my senior year in high school.

In the summer of 1976, my family moved from New Jersey to Northern California. For most parents, it would be unthinkable to relocate across the country prior to their kids entering their senior year in high school, but mine did without hesitation. My immediate reaction was, “What about my friends? What about my voice coach? What about Prom?” But deep down, I embraced the upside: adventure, new friends, a new voice coach, and prospects for a real boyfriend that didn’t know me through any embarrassing stages of growing up.

Moving allowed me to reinvent myself, wipe the slate clean, so to speak. I could start out as

a young adult, a California girl, just like in the Coke commercialsꟷblond, tan, my toes in the sand. I could experience life with the accompaniment of Beach Boys music.

Ahhh . . . gotta love the teenage imagination. And it only got better.

As a serious vocal student, I immediately won favor with the Performing Arts teachers at my new high school. These relationships also gave me the inside track to making friends. In short order, my new voice teacher presented me with an opportunity to audition for America’s Youth in Concert, a choir and orchestra whose members represented each state of the nation on a summer-long tour of Europe. I figured it was a long shot, but what the heck, so I sent in an audition tape.

My crude recording won me the spot of lyric soprano in the choir, and I would represent the state of California. After graduation, it would be off to Europe for me with my very first passport in hand.

We started the tour in New York's Carnegie Hall, then hopped over the pond to London, France, Austria, and Italy. While it was hard work performing every night, I had a blast. I gobbled up the living history of every city we visited, and I swore I saw the purported ghost that lurks in the circular hallways of London’s Royal Albert Hall. In Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, I imagined the Hunchback hiding out in the bell tower to listen to our performance. In Rome, I sang beneath Michelangelo's amazing painted ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. It was a life-changing experience. It also gave me independence and a work ethic for entering college.

I won’t kid you that the hard work balanced out with a huge amount of fun. At eighteen, my hormones were raging during my free time, especially if those off-hours involved a male foreign accent. By today’s standards, though, I was a goody-two-shoes, though, and I took my responsibility of state representation seriously. 

Forty-three years later, while packing for our move to Montana, I came across my photos and yearbook from that Europe trip, the summer of my life. I ended up sitting on the floor for nearly an hour while I relived so many long-forgotten moments of my younger and suppler days. Even after all this time, I’m still appreciative of the opportunity my parents afforded me.

As if by design, I found out that my stepdaughter’s new school in Montana will be sponsoring a trip to Europe during Spring Break of 2020. I signed her up for one of the twelve spots and surprised her with the news. She squealed like a stuck piglet at the county fair. Her trepidation about the move melted and, suddenly, Kalispell, Montana was a-okay  when attached with a 10-day trip to London. 

But I think it was more than the trip that won her over. My stepdaughter is now focused on the woman she thinks she'll be, not the girl she left behind. The trip will help her get to that place of confidence and independence, just like it did for me. And she's looking at Kalispell, Montana with new eyes, appreciating the beauty that surrounds her.

She skips rocks over the lake and sits with us on the porch

to watch the light-show from a thunderstorm. We gaze at the fiery stars. We run to the front window to marvel at the deer prancing across our driveway and anticipate our first sighting of a mountain lion or grizzly bear. Bald eagles and osprey circle overhead to hunt, and her Dad takes her to fish for bass in the lake while I make dinner.

I watch the two of them glide past the windows. She's going to be just fine.

I’ve come full circle. It's time to pay it forward. The opportunity that was afforded to me, I can now pass along to her. And thank goodness for Brexit, because the £175 that I have in my safe will still buy more than one round of fish and chips and several souvenirs.

Of course, the moving box of travel books had to be opened first. My stepdaughter has been poring through them for all the details of the Crown Jewels, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and chopped-off heads rolling on the dirt floor of the Tower of London. There will be much for her to take in when she goes to go to Oxford, Buckingham Palace, and sees a West End show in Piccadilly Circus.

It makes me squeal with delight, like that happy piglet, to do this for her. I'll never forget those stomach flutters as the plane lowered for a landing in London's Heathrow Airport. I was never the same kid again.

Photo: Micah Brooks

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband, stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. She spent 28 years as an executive in the entertainment industry and used her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. She studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and She Writes. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

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Check out all of Courtney's books: 

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Book 3 of the
Dushane Sisters
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The Dushane sisters finally get to the truth about their mother.

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Leaving the armchair to travel

I so love travelling. Planning the trip fills me with excitement and anticipation. I study maps and I read up on local history. I analyze hotel and restaurant reviews. Do we rent a car or use public transit? Can we fit in a castle visit AND a winery tour? How often does the ferry run? Sketching out an itinerary fills weeks of my time with dreams of picnics, evening strolls, relaxing hours in a pub.

But that’s just for armchair travelling.

On my actual trips, I’m stressed about packing, anxious about flights (not the flying, just everything before and after – checking in, luggage restrictions, etc.), worried that the plans which looked great on paper will fail spectacularly, leaving us stranded on a railway platform at 2am.

I’m pleased to way no disaster struck on our last bit of world travel. We may have encountered the occasional snafu (I now understand the jokes about RyanAir) but minor hiccups only add to the experience.

We cruised the Rhine and Moselle rivers, starting with a couple days in Zurich. Our hotel was located in a business park – not the most scenic location. But we set off on foot to explore and came upon a bike expo. We thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with the locals doing what locals do, and ate the most delicious bratwurst.

After the cruise we took the EuroStar to the UK, detrained in London, navigated the ‘tube’, got to the wrong platform so went in the wrong direction for a couple stops, got over to the correct platform retraced our steps (all while lugging three suitcases and a backpack) and eventually ended up at Stansted airport – which is an experience in itself.

We flew to Cyprus aboard that RyanAir flight I mentioned. It was the first time we used that carrier and so were unaware of their bizarre way of doing things. After a stressful couple of hours in three lines and a near-jog to the gate we settled in our ‘interesting’ seats and were ‘entertained’ by the continuous sales pitch from the flight crew. It certainly was…ah…memorable. (Cyprus was amazing and worth another visit but with a different airline.)

So while the actual trip didn’t match the paper trip exactly, I’m rather glad it didn’t. The minor hitches, and the accompanying bursts of adrenaline, only added to the travel memories.