I often wonder what it would be like to travel out of season. I am like the birds and the butterflies bound by seasons and the calendar, the clock ticking out my plans as persistently as nature itself. The rhythms of the school year are in my body, and they push and pull with tender familiarity like the pulse of a heart. I am tethered to the months. Just as the monarchs fly along their own invisible cord across the country or pelicans on trade winds to the south, so I take to the air only at certain times of the year.
June
This time of year for some teachers marks the big migration out of town, especially for the young ones who hit the road or take to the skies when the final bell sounds and the schoolhouse is shuttered for the season. The world opens wide to receive the weary walking shoes of young teachers in search of summer, the mythic muse of inspiration and uplift. Most teachers let June settle on them like a balm; true medicine that heals the wounds of failure and stress.
Once the stillness of June is upon us, we can start unfolding our maps and spinning our globes, dropping our pins in locations out of town. In my house, we start to feel a wild urge to lock up the house like we locked up our classroom, and leave for strange places with streets that don’t know us, to live inside days with no schedule, no routine. We want suitcases not closets, oceans not showers, nature not concrete, landscapes not screens. June is made of endings and beginnings for teachers. The finish line for the school year, and the starting line for travels.
July
If June gives us lift off, July brings us into the wildlands we seek whether in parks or cities, beaches or lakes, tents or hotels. Some teachers grow feral in July, growing out hair and beards, rejecting shoes and any semblance of routine or chores. We reclaim our first names and hope we don’t hear our last names until September. These are traveling days of reprieve wrapped inside of possibility on the open road or in the vast skies.
I know July like I know my own body. We go way back. I have a child’s love for July, summer’s jeweled crown. By this time, any sting from the last school year has dulled, and the new school year is still far in the distance. At this midpoint of idleness, I want only to follow the sun.
August
I often emerge from July sun struck and listless with the urge to travel growing quiet inside. August comes in with a song of the open road but then turns quickly to a drumbeat of duty. Our souls start to hunker down for the good work of the schoolhouse. As teachers, we’ve lost the summer cycle determined by the sun, beholden instead to a calendar summer designed by committee. We let the memories of our travels flicker in our minds or sometimes we cram a trip into the waning weeks. These August days feel like we are taking in deep breaths before we plunge in for the long swim.
September-October
I don’t think I’ve ever traveled in September or October. I’m starting to feel an instinctual shift inside me that wants to drive out of town behind a yellow school bus. I’ll follow closely then peel out to the right or left while the bus drives straight on to school on a bright September morning. I’ll take flight above the bustle of work and feel vacation vibes in autumn. To go to a land where the clock doesn’t rule supreme. Where time is elusive and indolence is celebrated. Make it up as we go along like David Byrne sings in This Must Be The Place. That’s really the fantasy, no schedule, no semesters, just hours stretching out as carelessly as the wind or light.
Byrne’s song is actually about home and love though, two ideas bound up together for most of us. We build our homes around the families we love. When you find someone who has a face with a view, you settle in for the seasons. If you’re lucky, you can also find a job that makes you say this must be the place. Most days, when I go to work that’s the refrain. While I may wonder what it’s like to travel out of season, my job in a school makes this mostly impossible. But the good news is most days from September to May, it’s where I want to be.