I conceived of this blog category as a place to insert narratives of the places we visit at some distance from the neighborhood, that fit the customary definition of a “trip” or “vacation” in some way. But as The Man Who Thinks Too Much About Everything, leaving it at that just doesn’t sit right, hence these preliminary reflections.
Does “traveling” always involve an overnight stay somewhere, and how far away does one have to go, really, to qualify as a traveler? What about the millions of people throughout history who’ve left a bad situation out of choice or by necessity to travel somewhere where life holds more promise? There may be more of these in our current world – and into the future, more than likely – than at any time previous. While acknowledging them, the topic of “travel” here is of the more usual and mundane kind, where necessity is not part of the equation, unless perhaps a compulsion for experiencing a change of scene far away has become overwhelmingly irresistible or even addictive.
In Ricky Nelson’s fabulous song, Travelin’ Man, the guy has señoritas and fräuleins etc waiting for him in far-flung locales like Mexico and Alaska, Berlin “town” and Hong Kong, not to mention his pretty Polynesian baby on the beach at Waikiki (poor Rick died in a plane crash while traveling on tour, in a story that had scandalous details).
Conde Nast’s magazine of travel and “luxury living” has always emphasized destinations of a similar ilk: London & Paris & NewYorkCity & all those other glamorous places everybody’s dreamed about in Europe and Australia and North America and Asia – with notably little in South America except for Mexico City and Buenos Aires, and if you’re going to Africa, Cape Town seems to be about all that is worth visiting, which says much about the Conde Nast brand. Think about what you might win as a prize on a quiz show and you’ll get this same list, with of course the added possibility of a cruise ship experience, which as travel goes is kind of a special category, or perhaps doesn’t qualify at all. Is this all there is to “travel”?
Of course not. If you’re an eco-tourist or “adventure traveler” the sky is the limit (or not, if you’ve the bucks to get into outer space), and the more exotic and “untraveled” the location is, the better. For the nature lover nothing beats anywhere near the equator, where the diversity of species is always best, and hiking in Nepal or Mongolia or cruising the Antarctic is likely to be an adventure of the most rewarding kind. Of course, hiking in the White Mts of New Hampshire and getting caught in a blizzard in September (when you started out in shorts and a t-shirt) is probably an adventure, as well, and it definitely happens sometimes.
But must travel always be about such relatively exotic things? What about our weekly bicycle rides, whereby we drive to some starting point 20 or 30 miles from the house, after which we travel for three to four hours along lovely country and suburban roads on our two-wheelers, usually with a stop at a restaurant along the way? Doesn’t this fit the Conde Nast model, since it’s all about sightseeing and “leisure activity” (yeah cycling is work but let us not quibble) and eating out? What’s the diff?
As a social worker, I encountered people of limited means and ambition whose total travel experience had been trips to Cape Cod, which for them defined “travel” at its most exotic, and this did not always include an overnight stay. For others, “traveling” only ever meant the times they’d go to a family reunion in Mississippi or Alabama, usually in a rented van with up to a dozen others. For them, travel and family were inextricably connected. Fluff pieces about their kind of experience never made it into Traveler magazine, as far as I know.
And what kind of people are “travelers” anyway? Before Rick Steves, Marco Polo was probably the most famous, who might’ve set the standard back in the day when he wrote his book; travel literature has been an established genre ever since with early proponents like Petrarch and Captain James Cook and you no doubt have your favorites in the current day – or maybe not, so when you tire of mysteries and romantic novels you might consider Paul Theroux.
For much of history most serious travelers have tended to come from the upper classes, with somebody like Edith Wharton, first hand chronicler of “old money” in the Manhattan of her day, crossing the Atlantic 60 times as the 19th century passed into the 20th – all of it by boat, of course. There have also always been adventure-travelers – who might’ve simply been “adventurers” in the beginning (does this include “explorers”? a good topic for some future online forum perhaps). Starting in the ‘60s when air fares became cheaper the world was suddenly awash with people like the low budget “hippie” traveler, and maybe that was you! Do you remember? You’d saved all your money from those crappy summer jobs and finally had your Eurail pass and backpack and your tolerance for youth hostel amenities, and that burning desire to get to Amsterdam to have your consciousness become truly liberated by forbidden chemical substances. Or maybe you were more spiritual than that, as you made your way to that ashram in India somewhere for the same thing, though the air fare to get there was quite a bit steeper; such is the cost of true spirituality.
I should add that Traveler was the name of Robert E. Lee’s horse, which is neither here nor there.
In our own life together, my wife and I have done more than our share of “family travels”, whereas those of the recreation & leisure category started with extended biking trips back when we were young and strong and tolerant of unbelievable discomforts. For many very good reasons we transitioned to eco/nature trips at some point, never giving a thought to consulting Conde Nast.
Right now the “next” trip is headed for Finland and Norway, specifically Lapland and points north, which is happening after a two-year delay due to covid. Of course the fact that Finland shares an 800 mile border on the east with Russia and that the world is still in various throes of uncertainty due to a pandemic were not considerations in the original plan. Friends are asking whether we’re going ahead with this risky venture, and of course we are, having been through an eerily similar scenario once before in 2016, when we headed to Honduras. You only live once.
Honduras has never been the ecotourist’s first choice to witness the wonders of tropical Central America; Costa Rica, with its political stability and relatively low poverty and brilliant decades-long strategy promoting nature as a destination gets the grand prize, far and away, and like so many we’d been there for our first eco trip outside the US. For a number of reasons Honduras looked like a terrific next choice, were it not for two events in the spring of 2016 as we were about to depart: first there was the much publicized Zika virus epidemic that had started in Brazil and worked its way north, and after that the brutal murder of a well known native Honduran organizer protesting the building of a dam, which received much press in the US at the same time we were about to leave. Do you remember Berta Cáseres? She’s still remembered and honored, especially now that the US-picked narcocrat who ran things in Honduras back in 2016 recently got voted out, bringing hope of a better future in Honduras for the first time in a long time. But that’s another story, as is the story of our trip there, which was wonderful in many ways, though some friends thought we were nuts. We were the only ones booked for that trip that showed up, by the way.
Which brings us to the general topic of anxiety, and how all manner of travel, especially that of any extended distance and duration, includes an element of uncertainty and stress despite the wonderful promise of it all. Travel requires an adventurous attitude to the point where some just don’t do it, except perhaps by automobile, and even then maybe never too far. Airline travel, once a luxury mode used by far fewer people traveling in greater comfort with more leisurely scheduling, transformed tremendously when it got deregulated, becoming much cheaper and more popular by a factor of a zillion. As grand as the “golden era” was, planes definitely crashed more and were much more subject to the vagaries of the weather, when propeller-driven airliners couldn’t fly above it like jets do now. The “miracle of air travel” nowadays means you’ll be cramped and likely have several stops before reaching your destination. Toss in variables like security lines and customs and computer meltdowns and unexpected flight cancellations and covid tests, and what results is that missed connections become a constant specter lurking in the back of one’s brain, or at least the back of mine.
We are each individual and peculiar when it comes to anxiety. I can ride a bicycle in heavy traffic with wariness but not fear; as a social worker, I’ve gone into neighborhoods and housing projects that once aroused tremendous white middle class anxiety, but no longer. But for some reason however I live in mortal terror of missing flights and having my plans for the day messed up far far from home, and worst of all having to think fast and adjust. This, in spite of the fact that it has happened before and I did fine.
The chance of encountering violence in lawless Honduras back in 2016 (we heard stories while we were there) or escaping a Russian invasion of Lapland next month, for me, are less of a worry. I make no claims to being a rational person, though I get by.
Rick Steves, the travel guru/philosopher/therapist/businessman is honest about how travelers need to be flexible and adventurous and take whatever happens in stride as part of what is always a rich experience, and in the end he’s right (said the man about to partake in some serious travel). And as I have always told other people, many disasters-in-the-moment are usually good stories thereafter, so long as nobody got hurt.
