Sabbatical Genesis

By Tamsin

We are just a little under two weeks from our departure.  As more and more people have learned of our plans I am being asked how I decided to embark on such a trip. In all honesty I don’t know how the specific idea came to be. Perhaps talking about my heritage is a place to start.

I believe the first travel trailer in the family belonged to my Grandpa & Grandma Harris.  My grandpa, Grant, and grandma, Jennabee, were always up for an adventure.  I don’t know exactly when they acquired their first trailer but I know it was lent to my parents for their honeymoon to Glacier National Park in August of 1964.  

Later, my mom must have decided that a trailer was essential for our family vacations.  She also decided that annual family vacations were essential and got my dad’s support even though as a farmer he had never experienced family vacations.  Mom had a great idea that Grandpa & Grandma could be co-owners of the trailer.  From my earliest memories, we vacationed every year in that 16’ trailer even as our family grew eventually to 11 people.  I don’t think Grandpa & Grandma used the trailer much.  I think the story is that the one time they did decide to use it the wheel fell off.

I have many happy memories of our trips in that trailer.  How did we fit our family in that tiny trailer? When we were young, the three youngest slept crossways on the bunk, the two oldest girls on the dinettes, and Karine in the “mouse hole”, the space under the table that was holding up the dinette bed.  As we got older, we took a tent along and the oldest slept in a tent or under the stars.  As we traveled, Mom would read aloud from a book that related to the area we were traveling by the light of the single gas mantle light. Dishes were washed in water heated on the stove and food was kept cold in an ice box where the block of ice was changed regularly.

I first heard the word “sabbatical” in 1976 as my father was reaching the point in his work at Washington State University where a sabbatical was an option.  If he could get a Guggenheim grant we would be able to go to England.  The grant came through.  My mom, pregnant with her 7th child, bought 16 army duffle bags and moved the family to England.  The family went to England for a 2nd sabbatical when I was a sophomore at Washington State University, I don’t know if the duffel bags were employed for this venture or not.

Maybe these were the seeds that led to where we are today.