LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Changes in attitudes
By J . Damon Cain
As we took turns ordering breakfast on our last day of vacation in San Pedro , Belize – coffee with cream and sugar for me , please and thanks – I checked my iPhone weather app : 78 degrees F , at the moment , partly cloudy with a light tropical breeze . Yesterday ’ s gentle rain had moved on . I took a picture of my oldest daughter , Shelby , and her fiance , Jason , the Caribbean at their back . The long shadows created by the early morning light reached in my direction , pulling my attention out to sea . In what now seems no longer than a turn of the head , the kids peeled away , departing for distant airport gates to make their separate connections home . Sheila and I , after a five-hour flight , retrieved our luggage from a baggage carousel in the dank and dreary bowels of a gray and spiritless Terminal 1 at O ’ Hare in the windy city of Chicago , 12 degrees . Reality has its ways . Ah , well . The wife and I were both born and raised in the Midwest where there are no mountains or much of anything else other than the occasional herd of cattle or a thin stand of trees to block the worst intent of an arctic clipper . So , no winter weather inconvenience would surprise us in Chicago even as our reorientation was a rude if not unsurprising welcome home . We walked , carrying bags , to the far end of an open-air but covered parking garage before finding our car , right where we left it , another 100 yards or so beyond in a snow-covered outdoor lot . With a touch of the keypad , the doors unlocked , the engine turned and heat flowed into the cabin – no small consolations given the time , the place , the conditions .
I love to travel , near and far , itch when I don ’ t get enough of it , and am almost always plotting and researching and putting pins in the world map of my mind of where it is next that our immediate family will gather .
One last coffee before we go .
San Pedro – its sandy beaches , palm trees and narrow and bumpy streets , its plethora of beach bars and overpriced restaurants , its breakfast nooks , bodegas , gift shops and art galleries , its cavalries of golf carts , its day spas and high-end real estate , its marine excursions and lounging iguanas , its Catholic Church offering English and Spanish language Mass and the quiet solitude of long and often lonesome piers – is all tucked into an elbow of Ambergris Caye , an island just off the coast of Belize City of the Central American country . Our children gifted this trip , this adventure . Sheila and I had talked occasionally about Belize . The kids pulled it together .
Yes , a holiday week in a warm seaside beach town was a spoiled and privileged escape for a pair of Midwestern kids , especially now that winter has returned with some vigor and grip , longer lasting in these hills and hollers of West Virginia than what we have experienced in recent years . The day after touching down at Yeager in Charleston , a second winter storm rolled in – this one stronger , accompanied by a deeper accumulation of snow . In prior years , that was that . The sun would return in the next day or so , the temps would rise and , presto-chango , all roads clear . Back to the party . Not in 2025 . Well , your cruise captain , here , suggests you take a break and get out of the house . Little pockets of island paradise exist right here in the southern rural reaches of West Virginia . Splurge and order up a margarita – on the rocks . Everything is right in front of you . It ’ s all about the attitude , not the latitude .
J . Damon Cain is editor of West Virginia South and The Register-Herald in Beckley , W . Va . He is a fan of the San Francisco Giants , the Iowa Hawkeyes , good beer , black Labs and his family . Over the course of a 45-year career , he has won myriad journalism awards , including those for writing , newspage design and photo editing .
The Register-Herald photo
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