Exotic and Alien

Describe your most memorable vacation.

Usually I didn’t have a vacation—not precisely. Since around 1991, I attended the Association of Theatre in Higher Education (almost every year for a while there) and, since they held it in the summer, those trips also included a vacation element. Depending on the location, I would see Broadway shows in New York, take an architectural boat tour in Chicago, or visit Disneyworld in Orlando.

For a different kind of conference, on popular culture, I took a Breaking Bad tour, visiting locations used in filming the series. I had not yet seen the show, so I did that in a kind of reverse order. I do still have my cup from Gus Fring’s restaurant (the real one, not Los Pollos Hermanos).

However, the most memorable vacation happened on one of my late wife’s conferences, when the organization decided to go to Maui, Hawaii. To be honest, much of it was just okay or nice or charming, nothing Immanuel Kant would write home about. However, there was one amazing and dazzling thing.

We did a bus tour to the top of Haleakala, the extinct volcano. Looking over the rim I suddenly found myself gazing at what seemed to be another world. I had never seen anything like it before or since, as the cliche goes. I bought the tourist souvenir book to remember, but I still have a clear image of that strange landscape in my mind.

Also, in the parking lot where the bus parked? A clowder of feral cats. Apparently they were running rampant up there at the time. As a cat person, I had no problem with that. My tour guide had said that no one could starve in Hawaii with all the fruit hanging from the trees; I assumed the same could be said of cats.

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