Our Next Theme: ESCAPE

As I think fondly back to the summer months just spent with my children, I'm reminded how exciting it was to travel to new places.  This summer I was lucky enough to go on two separate trips: one to France and one to Wyoming.  I had vastly different experiences on each trip.  In France I immersed myself in history, beautiful architecture and delicious food.  In Wyoming, I stood in streams in the middle of gorgeous countryside, listening to the sounds of running water, birds, and the occasional whoop of delight as my son or I caught a fish.

Both adventures were so different from my every day life that it felt I'd left it all behind.  I'd escaped to a new reality for a bit.

The word escape has an interesting etymology.  It stems from Medieval French and Latin words meaning "out of the cape".  A theory is that the word references how Romans might slip off their capes to avoid capture.

From there it's not hard to imagine that "escape" came to mean "getting away".  And it isn't simply a physical act.  A sigh of relief can escape our lips or we can try to escape a memory. Escape can be used as a noun, as in a daring prisoner escape or, according to one source, a cultivated plant run wild is called an escape.

I'd like us all to explore the word "escape". Will you show how you escape on vacation or by reading?  How the escape velocity enables rockets to push beyond the Earth's gravity?  How refugees escape the ravages of war?

How will you show "escape"?

Photo by Vivien Zepf