A Brief Note on Detours

A Brief Note on Detours

I wanted to see some Bog People today.

My local natural history museum has an exhibit about the Bog People culture of north-western Europe, and I was hoping to get a glimpse of the peat-soaked remains of some of my distant ancestors. (“Hey, there’s Uncle Ingmar!”) However, unknown to me, a 10 K Run that had been organized to occur in the vicinity of the museum. As I tried to get to there, I got caught in a tangle of blocked-off streets and crowds of people. I finally gave up and turned around.

Being somewhat miffed at having wasted the gasoline (I’m not kidding) and disappointed at not seeing the Bog People, I tried to salvage the trip by detouring to another museum in the general area. This museum is dedicated to displaying the remains of Ice-Age fossils. When I arrived there, I was delighted to discover that the park area around the facility was being converted into “Pleistocene Garden”, displaying the modern-day descendants of the native plant-life from the Ice Age.

I felt myself being transported back in time 25,000 years. I imagined I saw a giant sloth lumbering through the brush and thought I heard the trumpeting of a distant mastodon. And, I even think I caught a flash of the tawny hide of a saber-tooth cat slinking through the tall grass.

At the risk of sounding clichéd, if there was a lesson to be learned today, it was merely the reminder of that adage, “it’s the journey, not the destination, that’s important.” I went looking for one thing and ended up with something better.

Text and Image: Lori Gloyd (c) May 13, 2006