One Jeep, seven lovely women, and a day in Santa Barbara wine country. Today was a beautiful day! My adventure starts by picking up 3 lovely women from Los Angeles celebrating a birthday. My second stop, picking up 4 more visiting Santa Barbara from the Long Beach area. These four are celebrating friendship today. Celebration is in the air as we head into wine country.
Yummy Reds
What a beautiful day, a bit chilly with sunshine on its way. A cool breeze is in the air and the girls still convince me to take the cover off the Jeep. I succumb to their request, and am happy I did.
Driving around the Santa Ynez backcountry today is exhilarating! My passengers are enjoying spending time with their long time friends, and meeting their new Jeep-mates. I am enjoying the light chatter coming from the back of the Jeep as we head into the valley, anticipating a day of wine tasting followed by a delicious picnic lunch…the day delivers as promised!
It is a very unique experience traveling with people who do not know each other. In one sense, it is a gamble: the chances of not getting along fabulously are always there, but somehow our tours always seem to end in hugs with the promise of future get-togethers… I like this. As a matter of fact, this is definitely one of the main reasons I enjoy leading these adventures: being an instrument of relationship. It’s not about forcing anything, or necessarily even hoping for these strangers to get along with each other, but rather the excitement of introducing people to a frame of mind that includes everyone we come in contact with. We are on separate journeys, together, as we are in life! If we really think about it, we really are all in this life together. We may be in separate bodies, sometimes even in different parts of the world, but what do each of us have in common? We are all doing our very best to be happy, we’re just on different trails to get there.
Silent Water
What does all of this have to do with an adventure tour in Santa Barbara? Everything! Right now I have a vehicle filled to the rim with 8 different people, including myself, because, yes, I am on this adventure too. Some of us are paying to be here. Some of us have had this trip purchased for us, and one of us is being paid to execute this adventure…but we are all here, in the exact same place, at the exact same time.
As the sun reaches toward the center of the sky, and the chill comes out of the air, we start to smell the flowers on the side of the road, lining the edges of the vineyards. It has been a dry year, but the flowers are an integral part of the vineyards, and are thus irrigated regularly to help maintain the proper amount of advantageous critters in the fields, that help to keep the pests in control. What a fine art it is, winemaking.
Every step in the winemaking process requires attention to detail, and this is one of the common topics with my tour guests. Our adventures are not necessarily considered educational, but many questions come up and I do my best to have accurate answers. Managing a fine dining restaurant in Santa Barbara allows me access to tons of information relevant to these tours. Meeting and working with other people in the wine industry on a daily basis: discussing wine pairing with customers who oftentimes know more about a particular wine than I do: asking lots and lots of questions of our in-house wine expert: and discussing the delicate preparation of our food with our awesome chef. Everything about this experience is an opportunity for knowledge and I choose to take advantage of these unique opportunities.
We visit 4 wineries today, but one in particular catches my eye and opens us up to a wonderful new experience: a winery that has been around for a long time, but only recently opened a tasting room in Santa Barbara. While my guests are tasting wine with the owner (for about 2 hours), I explore the rest of the property and find a beautiful garden that exemplifies 2 powerful elements in this area: fire and water. A beautiful outdoor fire pit nestles energetically next to a gurgling fountain. These 2 elements are particularly relevant to Santa Barbara because of the relationship between nature and humans. Historically, Santa Barbara has had an ongoing battle with the lack of rainfall, and the danger of wild fire, so this particular display is very apropos.
I find myself enjoying the fire as it’s drifting with the cool breeze that has made its way back into the valley. My feet are up on the edge of the fire pit as I write in my journal. I never really understood Haiku, or what it is, but the words just seem to drift out of me, like the fire into the air:
.
An outdoor fireplace,
Toasty feet and chilly breeze.
My heart is content.
It is the rhythm of the words that make Haiku what it is: 5-7-5: the beat beneath the phrases. 5 syllables, then 7 syllables, then 5 again to finish it off. After writing my first Haiku, it appears to be very simple, because this is a natural rhythm that occurs in our everyday speech. A graceful pattern.
As the chilly winds pick back up, and our tour comes to a close, our new friendships have now been cemented. Adventure, fine wine, good food, a bit of poetry…and a whole lot of laughter. What more could one possibly ask for in one day?
