During World War 2, my grandma sang this song while working on a farm in upstate NY for the summer. As far as I know, this is the first time the full lyrics have been published on the internet.
Farming for Freedom (to the tune of the Caisson Song)
Up in trees, on our knees, Picking beans and strawberries, We are farming for freedom today.
Bit by bees, stung by fleas, We are working just with ease [?], We are farming for freedom today.
With our flag in sight We are working day and night, Feeding the men in the air and on the sea.
So it’s off we go To meet the common foe, Yes we are farming for freedom today.
(Cheer) Keep 'em eating, keep 'em eating!
I Googled exact phrases from the song and only found one hit, on page 59 of the autobiography Madame W by Leila Israel Weisberg. The related section is quoted below. Note the slight differences in the lyrics.
Due to labor shortages, New York State had a program which organized volunteers to harvest farm crops. I signed up for the two-week program.
The group of volunteers gathered on Sunday morning for the trip to Poughkeepsie, New York on the Hudson River Day Line. When we arrived in Poughkeepsie we were loaded onto buses and taken to various camps in the area where we would be housed for two weeks. My group was taken to the training camp used by Tony Canizzaro, the prizefighter. The accommodations seemed rustic to me, a city girl, but quite adequate. After a good supper, we all went to bed early because we had to get up the next morning at 5:30 am. Breakfast was at 6 and the area farmers started picking us up at 7. Each of us was given a bag lunch and we were loaded onto the backs of trucks and taken to the farms. We picked cherries, currants, and strawberries and weeded tomatoes. We were paid for our work by the bushel or pint or by the hour when we did weeding. The farmers kept track of what we earned.
As we worked, we sang a song to the tune of “As Those Caissons Go Rolling Along.” I only remember the first verse. It went like this:
“On our knees Up in trees Picking peas and strawberries We are farming for freedom today.”
It was the hardest work I had ever done and I came back to camp each evening so tired I could barely eat and flop into bed. We had to pay for our room and board and after two weeks, my earnings covered all but $3 of the cost.
If you’re enjoying life, you might be one of the millions of Americans suffering from hypoanxiety. Beware — this condition can spoil your well-educated urban existence.
Symptoms include: Building campfires, riding elevators, committing to relationships, listening to people crunching and slurping without flying into a rage, using public restrooms, allowing your children to play outdoors, eating canned food and consuming less than nine cups of coffee a day.
But don’t worry — The Big City Times can help. A daily dose of the Big City Times with breakfast can reverse the symptoms of hypoanxiety in college graduates. Visit our website — behind the paywall — and join the lonely crowd.
Side effects may include brunch, jaywalking, seasonal wardrobes, eyebrow grooming, sinus headaches and taxes.
I walked the Camino de Santiago in 2005. Eight years later, the experience is transformed into a little book for your armchair travel pleasure. Enjoy. Ultreia!
Or, as the blurb says:
Guided by Shadows puts you on the path to Santiago. It reveals not only the joys and pains of the route, but also the mysteries, frustrations and absurdity of a 500-mile walking pilgrimage.
The frustrations, impatience, exhaustion, and fed-upness of culture shock exist because a place is flirting with you. It’s teasing you. This is the first stage of the courtship ritual. It doesn’t need you and there’s no way it’s going to bend to your whim. But secretly, deep down, it’s aching for a relationship.
This blog’s tagline is, “The road is where you are.” But what does that mean?
It means that you are always traveling. It is a response to travelers or travel bloggers who complain about being “home” and wish to return to “the road.” It is an admonition to lifelong journeyers to embrace their current location, wherever that might be, with the spirit of travel. It is a dare to make an existential leap — from seeing your life as punctuated by periodic travel, to seeing your life as perpetual travel.
These ideas mesh with Ribbonfarm’s “The Stream Map of the World” post, which proposes the construct of streams and stream citizens. If you’ve filled a passport (or two or three +) with stamps, and made friends from all over the world in the process, you might feel a tension between your weird roving lifestyle and rooted Western culture. The Ribbonfarm post might help you understand the path you’ve taken, and encourage you to continue on your way despite growing cultural/family pressure to pick a spot and stay there.
Fellow Millennials, I’m looking at you.
Here are a few selections from the post, bold mine:
A stream is not a migration pattern, travel in the usual sense, or a consequence of specific kinds of work that require travel (such as seafaring or diplomacy). It is a sort of slow, life-long communal nomadism, enabled by globalization and a sense of shared transnational social identity within a small population.
Stream citizens are not global citizens (a vacuous high-modernist concept that is as culturally anemic as the UN). Their social identities are far narrower and richer. They are (undeclared) stream citizens, whose identities derive from their slow journey across the world.
Selected features of stream citizenship (from a list of 12):
3. Voluntary slowness: A stream is a pattern of movement where individual movements take place over years or decades, spanning entire development life stages. Unlike a decade-long limbo state imposed by (say) waiting for an American green card, which has individuals impatient to get the process over with and “settle down” in either a new home, or return to an old one, stream citizens don’t experience their state as a limbo state. They are always “home.” Being a relatively new phenomenon, there are no streams that are life-encompassing as yet. But I believe those will emerge — distinctive cradle-t0-grave geographic journeys.
10. High adaptability: Nostalgia is weak for stream citizens, as is the faraway-home/near-exotic sense of alienation from surrounding. Stream citizens are both home and abroad at the same time.
12. Lack of an arrival dynamic: This is perhaps the most important feature. There is no sense of anticipation of an “arrival” event such as getting an American green card, after which “real” life can begin. There is a wherever you go, there you are indifference to rootedness. This psychological shift is the central individual act. By abandoning arrival-based frames, stream citizens free themselves from yearning for geographically rooted forms of social identity.
Note: After reading the Ribbonfarm comments and Googling a few phrases, it seems that this meme hasn’t been discussed by the Rolf Potts-inspired Vagabonding blog network, the RTW scene or the Matador Mafia. If it has been and you can link to threads of interest, please do so in the comments.
Try this: The next time you extract yourself from a dream, write it down. I don’t mean the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, but rather the next time you lucidly decide to leave a dream.
The next day, observe how your half-asleep brain uses words. You might find what I did: There’s an effortless economy that’s enviable, but there are also some weird wordings and mistakes. Fun!
The unedited exhibit:
Scary protest dream, set in Emmaus. There with Mel outside a building when cops pepper sprayed from the roof. We ran, putting bandanas around our mouth/nose. Ran through streets chased by fire ladder truck spraying pepper from hose at top of extended letter. Chased into a park. The mob found an abandoned youth hostel and crowded in out of the rain for bathroom and shower. I said, someone should keep watch. I went to a nook by the door and saw cops near. Yelled officers approaching! and ran back across the meadow. A cop caught me by the back of my rain jacket. I’d lost Mel. While the cop was cuffing three people up against the back of his car, I sprinted off toward a stand of pine trees. Got away for now.
Notes:
1. “Our mouth/nose” — it works. 2. Fire ladder truck, an interesting compound noun. 3. Letter instead of ladder. 4. Lack of quotation marks. 5. After “scary,” only essential adjectives. Extended, abandoned and three. Counting “rain jacket” and “pine trees” as nouns. 6. “Got away for now.” Still participating in the episode, even though I’m arguably awake.
After the hipsters will come the fogeys: youth who affect elderly ways.
We’ve already seen the trend’s roots in hipsterdom. Dyed-gray hair, button-up sweaters, knitting, and so on. But the fogeys will go further. Motorized scooters, Centrum Silver, medicinal lotions, compression socks. It’ll be golf, crosswords, and bingo all day. Live-well communities will pop up in Brooklyn to meet the fogeys’ demand.
Fogeys will fight Craigslist bidding wars over Buick LeSabres. Weekday golf will be instant street cred. SXSW will introduce the masses to Welkcore. Promiscuity will reach new milestones. Fogeys will pinch pennies and pay by check, or else openly acknowledge, finally, their comfy fixed incomes.
The city of Allentown began with a decision to spin silk, followed by a swing to the opposite pursuit of making steel, and the lumbering steel industry forged transcontinental rail tracks and train wheels and who knows how many hobo shovels and skyscraper guts and World War II cannons before eventually collapsing under its own benefit-heavy, slow-to-adapt-to-world-competition density, leaving the Lehigh Valley teetering on the brink of destruction for a number of years — 10? 15? — long enough for Billy Joel to write a song about it , which often serves as the primary point of reference when the subject of hometowns comes up while an Allentown resident is on the road, and which proved apt but only for a while, because somehow the underlying German work ethic — as people round here like to believe — prevailed against the burnt-out industrial past, and turkey farmers sold their holdings to big businesses seeking the perfect point for efficient distribution, close to New York and Philadelphia and D.C., outside of the tax shackles of New York and New Jersey, on the interstate, with a large and ready and well-trained workforce, and medical device manufacturing crept west, out of Jersey and the Philly suburbs, and the universities grew and pulled in students and professors and janitors and librarians and lab techs and the retiring parents of the students, who could spot a good lifestyle and saw the sea of bluehairs as an advantage rather than an annoyance or burden, and charitable interests sought to preserve the health of the population, transmuting chemical fortunes into medical megaplexes, healing all who knocked and presented a valid, too-rare health insurance card, especially the aforementioned elderly (many beyond the point of healing), sputtering to their exits while their grandchildren stuck around and pieced together artistic ventures centered around rockabilly hair, skateboards, hula hoops, Twitter and used books, accepting that they had enough parks and alcohol and willing romantic partners in the Lehigh Valley and didn’t need to move to Philly or New York after all, but could live a slow, content life with a solid soundtrack right here in little old traffic-choked Allentown, PA.
Don’t write off routines. The word routine, meaning “usual course of action”, comes from route — “a traveled way”, “a means of access” or “a line of travel”, according to Webster. In other words, a road.
“But that’s a metaphorical road!” you might say.
True, although “hitting the road” — i.e. travel — is a metaphor itself. It’s not easy to drive from New York to Bangkok. And even for the classic Interstate road trip, being on the road connotes both pavement underfoot and personal development, advancement or achievement — the Kerouac-style Journey of Self-Discovery.
However, a JoSDy doesn’t require an actual, physical journey. Not everyone is down with the barbarian lifestyle. Instead, people choose to have a home base because it helps them pursue long-term relationships and goals. It facilitates sedentary accumulation. (English translation: It helps them hoard stuff.) Their base upholds the sculpture of their life. No big deal. More room to stretch out on the Bengaluru to Kolkata train for everyone else.
A military base supports a field of operations, and some people like this strategy. Again, it’s not always the best. The base itself is not the end, not the goal. It’s the foundation — from the Latin fundus, or bottom — that allows the buildup of funds, or capital: Financial, physical (tangible assets), social (relationships), human (education), or however else you might define it. Robbers stage hold ups for funds because funds uphold existence.
And even nomads have a base: Tight stitching around the bottom of the backpack.
The Thrill of International Competition (Vagablogging)
November 18, 2010
You don’t have to be a star athlete to experience the thrills of competition on the world stage. Some of my best travel memories have been made at the foosball table.
The endorphin rush of sports in combination with the similar neurostimulation of travel is delicious.
You don’t need a uniform, contract, nor sponsor. Pickup soccer on the beach or in the plaza, cricket on the banks of the Ganges, or even chess in a Budapest bath. Competition becomes the common language. Your skill and focus matched against a foreign adversary.
It goes without saying to keep it civil and watch who you’re dealing with. No need to add Pool Hall Shootout to your itinerary. Though, to be fair, the most likely place to find a gunfight might be home.
Have any stories of competition on the road? Let’s hear…
The Merits of Travel Industry Fluency (Vagablogging)
November 10, 2010
Independent travelers often have a love/hate relationship with the travel industry.
The love: Transportation networks make things easy. Beds of all calibers are usually easy to find. Information about places we’ve never been to has been collected and bound into books.
The hate: The industry’s ability to funnel large numbers of people into a single place. Over-marketing. Price gouging.
The love and hate aren’t always on equal footing: It’s easy to be more conscious of the negatives than the benefits received. But no matter its shortcomings, it’s important to be fluent in the workings of the multibillion dollar per year travel industry.
-You have to know when the high season is to know when it’s off-season.
-It’s good to keep abreast of niche products that just might work for you, like the multi-stop tickets Jessica recently posted here.
-There are needs within the industry that you might be able to fill, in exchange for cash or free travel.
-Knowing what’s on offer in a given city — hotels, travel services, guides, etc. — gives you at least a backup plan.
Though we often travel outside of it, why else should vagabonds have a working knowledge of the travel industry? Interested to hear your thoughts…
Hell’s Angels and RTW Travelers: Something in Common? (Vagablogging)
September 29, 2010
LIFE.com recently put up a set of never-before published photos of the Hell’s Angels from 1965. Check out these quotes from the photo captions — there’s something shared between the mid-60’s Hell’s Angels and the RTW travelers of today. Of course, the list of things NOT in common is plenty long — independent travelers aren’t known as a particularly violent, felonious bunch — but hey, here goes:
-The work/life relationship as central to the status of outsider:
“They, of course, didn’t have jobs. They despised everything that most Americans pursue — stability, security. They rode their bikes, hung out in bars for days at a time… They were self-contained, with their own set of rules, their own code of behavior. It was extraordinary.”
-The nomadic urge leading to a bad reputation:
“…they were more lost nomads than real criminals.”
-A fluency with improvisation and unpredictability:
“There was always a sense that anything could happen at any minute. Things could go from light-hearted to scary pretty goddamn quick.”
-A total immersion in travel and its strange sleeping places:
“…the Bakersfield run was around the clock, three days and nights.” In Bakersfield,” remembers Ray, “I slept on the floor of the Blackboard Cafe — the bar that the Angels basically lived in while they were there.”
-Having to deal with others questioning your motives. (If not the cops these days, then family, friends, and (potential) employers):
“Anyone who envies the Angels their freedom,” Bill Ray notes, “should really keep in mind that wherever they go, whatever they’re doing, the cops are always watching.
-Having to deal with others attempting to constrain your travels:
“As we came to Bakersfield, about twilight ,” Bride remembers of the end of the ride from San Bernardino, “we sat on a hill and looked down into town, where an armada of cop cars and flashing lights awaited us. When we finally got there, the cops told the Angels that they were restricted to two bars, and two square blocks of territory. ‘Move out of that area,’ they said, ‘and you’ll be locked up.'”
-And maybe most of all, keeping alive the American myth of The Road:
“There’s a romance to the idea of the biker on the open road,” Bill Ray says. “It’s similar to the romance that people attach to cowboys and the West — which, of course, is totally out of proportion to the reality of riding fences and punching cows. But no doubt, there’s something impressive about these Harley-Davidsons and bikers heading down the highway. You see the myth played out in movies, like Easy Rider, which came out a few years after I photographed the Angels — you know, the trail never ends for the cowboy, and the open road never ends for the Angels. They just ride. Where they’re going hardly matters. It’s not an easy life. But it’s what they choose. It’s theirs. And everyone else can get out of the way or go to hell.”
Being a practical nation, Americans turn to pilgrimage to seek salvation of their bodies. Freedom not from sin, but from antibiotics, pesticides, and the absurdity of the Industrial Diet. Instead of walking church to church, pilgrims walk from sustainable farm to farm.
In return for a donation, pilgrims receive a place to sleep or to stake their tent, a shower and toilet, a dinner and breakfast (either prepared or something they can cook themselves). For now, a small tent and camping stove are recommended.
It’s unclear whether the pilgrimage has an endpoint or not. Most often it’s self-defined by time constraints, often circular. The waypoints are non-linear, just a smattering of farms across the country. The route is formed by making 20 or 50 phone calls before heading out, asking and explaining. Bring your own map, leave markers if you’re so inclined. Where you choose to walk is up to you.
For now, pilgrims have to accept large stretches of road walking. The upside is raised awareness of the fact that you don’t need much.
At times, the pilgrimage has a work-trade element built in. Farmers budget tasks and funds for anticipated pilgrims — painting, cleaning, stacking, and so forth. It’s a good idea to ask in advance. The issues of work legality, taxes, and insurance coverage are beyond me — ideas?
Americans are always looking for the next best weight loss and/or fitness program. This is it, but it’s also so much more.
“Susan Block and her father had the conversation that we all need to have when the chemotherapy stops working, when we start needing oxygen at home, when we face high-risk surgery, when the liver failure keeps progressing, when we become unable to dress ourselves. I’ve heard Swedish doctors call it a “breakpoint discussion,” a systematic series of conversations to sort out when they need to switch from fighting for time to fighting for the other things that people value—being with family or traveling or enjoying chocolate ice cream.”
Palliative travel? The intersection of hospice and hospitality? Might be onto something here…
From “Letting Go” by Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, 8/2/2010
What’s the Immediate Cause of Your Travel? (Vagablogging)
August 25, 2010
Although we plan and save and daydream about traveling for months on end, I’m wondering if you could share what are the immediate causes, if any, that precipitate your decision to travel.
You could call it the Travel Eureka Moment — that instant when you decide that it’s time for a trip.
Here are a few that jump out at me. Curious to hear how these and other deciding factors have led to travel…
A “What am still I doing here?” realization. Possibly the result of overqualification or lack of job advancement, a stagnant relationship, generalized boredom, a soured routine, or any other variety of fed-upness.
Passing a savings milestone. After watching the bank account build for however many months, now you can switch to watching the odometer turn.
School acceptance/graduation. The months just before or just after are looking wide open…
Out of the military and not having to take orders anymore.
Someone close to you commits to travel. Alright, you’re in? Let’s do this.
Super Sale. Couldn’t pass up the cheap ticket.
Post-breakup. Meeting yourself again and who knows who else.
Health: From diagnosis to recovery to prevention. Whether primarily physical or mental, travel will further intertwine the two.
Perceived Opportunity. For business or pleasure.
Date-based deadline. ‘Cause we’re not getting any younger.
Read a book and just had to go.
Do your decisions to travel often have a single, immediate cause? More cliche: What have been your travel tipping points? Or does it come down to a constellation of factors?
I got stopped by the police last night because my flashlight was at half-power. Specifically, my car had a headlight out. I couldn’t see the whole road, and the road couldn’t see much of me.
The officer wanted to make sure I knew, because people often overlook their lack of illumination. It’s easy to do. You can get by with one headlight, streetlamps mask the outage, or it’s not fully dark yet.
Travelers and would-be travelers: Are both your headlights working? Are you seeing the whole road? When one goes out, who can you trust to tell you?
(And hey, if you’re on a motorcycle, it’s even more important to keep that headlight shining…)
How Do Tour Groups Fit Into Your Travels? (Vagablogging)
June 30, 2010
A non-hypothetical question: What’s your relationship with tour groups? Travel blogs often debate the worth of these two, but I’m curious about the actual facts of your experience. How do tour groups factor into your travels, if at all?
An Indian friend of mine who lives in New York, no stranger to the vagabonding approach to travel, just got back from a two-week group tour through the American west. They cooked their own food, slept in tents, and covered about 3,500 miles in a ten-person van. He had a blast.
He chose to take the tour because he wanted to see a bunch of National Parks but didn’t have the time to plan it out. He didn’t want to drive, and wanted to meet like-minded adventurers. The group included people from six different countries, and the only American was the guide.
He found the tour company online and was confident to book with them based on the website alone. When the group got together, everyone seemed to have a similar Frugal Improvisation travel philosophy and friendships formed quickly.
Have you traveled with any tour groups lately? Did you book it at home or abroad? How did it square with your usual approach to travel? How did the cost compare to solo travel costs? Would you do it again?
If you believe what you read here on the Interwebs, the path to travel salvation is through a Wi-Fi connection. The Ultimate Setup is to be location independent, a digital nomad, with the freedom to go anywhere you want, at any time, while the PayPal payments roll in. Your laptop will set you free.
But what happened to being an analog nomad? An analog nomad is location dependent. You go where the work is.
Take your music on tour. Follow the harvest. Work the festivals. Give medical care where it’s desperately needed. There must be a million more examples.
The downside to this lifestyle is that you can’t just go wherever you want. There needs to be a reason for you to be there. Some sort of demand, and you show up as the supply. The upside, though, is if you pick the right place, you’ll be welcomed wherever you go.
There are dark avenues here: The smuggler, mercenary, snail-oil salesman. You can make your own decisions.
I started thinking about this when I saw the video below. It’s made by a guy I used to go to summer camp with, who’s crisscrossing America by relying on his guitar and converted wagon. Playing on small stages for small crowds, making it work.
The irony is that the tour was probably set up through the web, and is being cataloged and marketed through the web. No matter. There’s no mistaking the main event.
Indulging Ideals Versus Indulging Vices (Vagablogging)
June 9, 2010
This morning I read about a hotel that’s under construction. There’s an art museum going up around the corner, and the hotel is designed to complement it by displaying contemporary art in the rooms and common areas. Construction is partly financed by a local nonprofit focused on downtown revitalization. The husband-and-wife operators are excited — Steve Wilson, the husband, says, “We have a totally embracing experience where [people] walk into the hotel and they’re in the middle of an art gallery.”
Sounds cool, right?
Here are some more details: The hotel will have 120 rooms, going for roughly $190 per night. The husband-and-wife team are building this hotel (and two others) as extensions of their 21c Museum Hotel brand, which started in Louisville, Kentucky. The other two hotels are going up in Austin and Cincinnati; this hotel will be in Bentonville, Arkansas. Along with 21c and the local nonprofit, the third financier/owner will be the Walton family, founders of Wal-Mart. You can bet that most of the rooms will be booked by business travelers visiting Wal-Mart’s Bentonville headquarters.
Still want to go?
I do. The late-night hotel bar conversations will be bizarre, with a chance of cute account exec from Atlanta. There’s the thrill of renting your own personal art gallery. You can be a voyeur to the flip side of People of Wal-Mart (and no, I’m not linking). Plus, Wal-Mart’s my guilty pleasure (sad but true).
But then there are the ethics and ideals that argue against such a splurge. Reconciling the $190 with my usual spending habits. The one-place-at-a-time trade-off: It’s Bentonville or a dream destination du jour. The rat-guilt of funneling my hard-saved travel dollars into the pockets of the Wal-Mart clan.
So this brings us to the main question (and thanks for hanging in there):
How many people use travel as an opportunity to get closer to their ideals — ideals that might get pushed in the direction of the back burner during normal “at home” making-a-living time — and, after having lived nearer to these ideals for as long as possible, can return to the grind with minimal psychological/ethical turmoil?
And how many people use travel as a pressure-release opportunity to indulge their vices? After having lived their ideal good-clean-hardworking-responsible-familyfriendly lifestyle for the bulk of the year, how many people hit the road and swill booze, smoke cigars, sunburn their bellies, roll dice, and all-around blow off steam in the name of sanity maintenance?
It’s hard to always travel one way or the other, although sometimes round these parts there’s a feeling that we should. If you catch yourself where you think you don’t belong, go easy on yourself. It’s probably just some sort of balancing act.
Finger Lakes Trail: 900 Miles of Lonely Hiking (Vagablogging)
May 26, 2010
The Finger Lakes Trail is deceptively simple. Looking at the map above, you might think, “What’s there to see?” It doesn’t trace a rugged coast, doesn’t piggyback on the spine of a mountain range, and barely even interlaces with the Finger Lakes. Neither elevation nor landscape varies much — it’s mostly rolling hills. Consequently, the southern half of upstate New York isn’t thought of as a major outdoor destination. And that’s exactly the point — the FLT offers wilderness and solitude in a time when both are getting trickier to find.
The FLT spans 561 miles from Allegheny State Park to the Catskills, connecting the North Country Trail to the Long Path. Side routes add another 351 miles, bringing the FLT system to over 900 miles of trail. The 4,600-mile North Country Trail actually co-opts 420 miles of the FLT (en route to the Adirondacks). The FLT also connects to Canada’s 500-mile Bruce Trail, and provides the northern terminus of the Great Eastern Trail (not shown on map).
According to the FLT Conference, only about 20 people thru-hike the trail each year. The total number of thru-hikers in the trail’s 48 year history is a mere 289. The trail takes about six to seven weeks to complete, and it’s easy to go an entire week without seeing another hiker.
Despite the light traffic, the FLTC maintains a family of maps and keeps them constantly updated. As seen here, there are plenty of updates due to the patchwork nature of the route. The trail hops back and forth between state land, state parks, and private land (often farms) . [UPDATE: According to nogods in the comments below, this back and forth leads to significant road walking.]
The trail’s diverse ownership, light traffic, and equally light political sway make it vulnerable to competing land-use priorities. Sections are closed for weeks at a time during hunting season, state lands are subject to clear-cuts, and private landowners can revoke their agreements with the FLT at any time.
The trail’s greatest threat is gas drilling development in the Marcellus Shale formation (see map on page two of this PDF). The FLTC is currently fighting for special protection, similar to that granted by New York State to the Catskills and the NYC watershed.
If you really want to get away — while helping the FLTC have a stronger argument for protection — how about spending a couple nights or weeks on the trail?
Western manners don’t teach us how to respond to non-Western hospitality.
I’m talking about generosity that’s over-and-above what we’re used to. The sort of generosity where saying please or thank you is shunned as unnecessary, or even taken as slightly offensive.
India is famous for its hospitality, and lately I’ve been feeling confused about how to respond to the one-sidedness of things: Meals that never end, being constantly told to put my wallet away, and the hotel attendant who follows me to my door, then jumps inside to flip on the lights before I enter the room.
It can be hard for independent travelers to accept hospitality. When you’re used to relying on yourself, sometimes it’s difficult to relax and rely on others. Or maybe you too have had friends tell you they’re sick of you asking to crash on their couch. I’ve lost friends this way, and the result is a constant nag — “Am I imposing?”
Plus, when your life is condensed to a backpack, there’s little you can offer in return. Even at home, those saving-for-travel studios and sharehouses aren’t conducive to feats of hosting.
Here in Mirzapur, the family that owns the restaurant across the street hasn’t let me pay for a meal in over a month. I don’t have one of those do-don’t cultural guidebooks, and don’t know the right response. I try with gifts, namastes, and happy belly patting, but I’m starting to think it’s OK if I don’t figure it out. Maybe there’s no “it” — no response needed, nothing special to do.
The generosity might just be one big chunk of evidence that as independent as I think I am, I’m really not. I’m dependent, clueless, and there will always be so much I don’t understand. This is the ancient treatment reserved for goofy, smiling, piecemeal-Hindi foreigners. OK, fine, I’ll accept the truth.
Tomorrow I’ll leave as bewildered as I was at the beginning, feeling indebted. However, hopefully part of my keeping-score Western mind will see my hosts’ smiles as genuine, and will consider the possibility that even without a common language, their memories will be as good as mine.
How do you walk the tightrope of giving and receiving?
The RTW trip lasted about two years and three days. It started in Pokhara, Nepal, and ended while traversing a pile of ceramic teacup shards this morning in Mirzapur, India. My left sandal has called it quits.
In the moment before I accepted its passing, the sandal’s life flashed before my eyes. A life of travel — from the Himalayas to the lakes of Maine, to the midlife grind of Pennsylvania boarding house showers, then back to India for one last push.
Sure, these sandals went all over. But even if you never leave your city, a shoe still breaks when it’s too full of stories.
A busted shoe ranks right up there with piles of tickets and calloused heels as a testament to ground covered. A shoe breakdown of the sort I had this morning brings one of those moments where we face up to where we’ve been, how far we’ve come.
Looking back can leave you proud, nostalgic, awestruck — or it can be a motivator to change direction. At least, I imagine that would be the effect when a heel falls victim to three years of the same subway staircase.
Sometimes it’s hard to let go. Anybody else have shoes in semi-retirement? Old dogs that can’t be depended on as they once were, but that now make brief, low-stakes appearances? You know, those hiking boots with worn-smooth soles, now only good for dry sidewalks…
As great and comfy as old shoes are, I’m always happy for a new (or rejuvenated) pair. That feeling of potential — I want to walk around the world! — can’t beat it.
Quick and Wild Trekking on Vancouver Island (Vagablogging)
April 21, 2010
You know a trek is badass when it was created along a rugged coast to rescue shipwreck survivors. When its Wikipedia article is loaded with phrases like “surge channels” and “impassable headlands”. When a friend of a friend sees a documentary on the trek, doesn’t catch the name, and emails, “Tell me where this trek is or I’m going to die.”
It’s not a massive trek — only 47 miles (75km). But there’ll be plenty of adventure, and with an oceanview lean-to every 8km you can stretch things out as you please.
But even if you take a laid-back pace you’ll still have to negotiate dozens of “ladder structures” to travel among the Pacific cliffs. The tallest is reported at over fifty stories high. Just don’t look down.
You’ll have to cross rivers on cable cars — motor not included. While standing on a slippery platform you haul the car in with a rope, load up, let gravity carry you halfway across, then pull yourself to the far platform hand-over-hand.
You’re likely to cross paths with cougars, bears, wolves, orcas, and salmon-fueled vagabonds. Luckily there’s a mandatory pre-trek orientation to prepare you for encounters with such animals.
There are rumors of a Native American family that lives near the end of the trek and cooks knock-down meals for any and all passerby.
Lastly, there’s this no-nonsense warning from the town of Port Renfrew, one of the two trailheads:
…One of the most grueling treks in North America. It is isolated, strenuous, physically demanding and potentially hazardous. Hiking the WCT demands stamina and expertise in hiking and backcountry camping skills. You are required to wade rivers, use cable cars, negotiate steep slopes, climb ladders and follow an irregular, slippery trail.
Walked a kilometer south to Lanka today, looking for a market. Found a market. Saw a big gate, turned left off the main road and under the gate’s arch. Walked 500m, saw nothing promising, turned around, and returned to the main road.
Found a sandal tent and bought a pair of sandals. Went into two photo studios and noted their capabilities and printing prices in my notebook. Found an underwear store and bought a 90cm-chest tank top after 15 minutes of looking at bewildering options.
Went into a technical bookshop. Bought Fractional-Horsepower Electrical Machines, printed by Mir Publishers, U.S.S.R. They thought I was a visiting professor at B.H.U.
Saw a shop across the street called FUNK and made the obligatory visit. Tried on three shirts, none fit. They tried to sell me a women’s Ed Hardy tee.
Priced the net cafe next door. Half the price of Assi Ghat.
Crossed the street and looked into a restaurant called Hot Spice. No toilet, walked out. Saw a sign for “Heritage Hospital Main Entrance”. Followed the arrow.
Went into Heritage Hospital. In the lobby, saw an old woman on a stretcher. Asked about the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine — no dice. Used the toilet.
Checked out another internet cafe. A treehouse-type spot on a roof, accessed by a narrow, no-railing staircase. Surprisingly jam packed like the first treehouse on the block. Left.
Bought a water from the pharmacy next door, considered buying fruit.
Walked onto the B.H.U. campus through the big B.H.U. gate. Studied a massive map in the massive sun. Tried to negotiate a rickshaw tour, failed. A B.H.U. student came over and helped me get a loop ride for twenty rupees.
Saw a fraction of the campus on the loop. Took some bad photos from the moving rickshaw. Back at the B.H.U. gate I paid twenty as agreed, despite protest for thirty.
Crossed the street to retrace my steps. Hit my head while ducking under a low sign.
Got used by the internet for an hour.
Rode a rickshaw back to Assi Ghat. Think I spotted a mall en route, might be a spot to bask in A/C.
Back at Assi, picked up my sole button-down from the laundry. Went to my room to eat an orange, find out the tank top doesn’t fit, lie under the dust-collecting, electric-starved fan and sweat and record these details.
I like to criticize technology’s effects on travel — how it can shut us off from both sight and sound, turn soul-searching into wi-fi searching, and funnel hours of exploration into the confines of a monitor. But today, the man in dark glasses reminded me how blogging can push you further into the analog world.
A few hours ago I was sweating in Varanasi with no idea what to write about. Sat down on a bench for chai, thinking it might kickstart the motor. The man above sat down, his glaucoma glasses shouting talk to me! Turned out he’s a sculptor, with the ripped up hands to prove it.
Do you want to come to my house and see my sculptures?
Groan — another seemingly friendly guy who wants to sell me something. And that voice in the head, “Is it safe?”
Normally I would decline such a sales-pitch reeking invitation, but I knew that as soon as I said OK, I’d have something to blog about.
I said OK.
Sure enough, he offered me a trio of terracotta gods for an outrageous price. But at no charge I got to see a striking bust of the founder of Banaras Hindu University, skulls and skinless legs sculpted for the U’s anatomy department, and a Buddha so real you felt obliged to include him in the conversation.
You could say it was all thanks to the man in the dark glasses, but really it’s thanks to this blog.
There’s a fine line here — doing something just to say you’ve done it gets old fast. But when you need to break out of a rut or want to push into a new level of engagement with a place, doing it for your readers can make a fast, rewarding impact on your experience.
Whether for a blog, a campfire, or plain old conversation — do you believe in doing something just for the story? Your perspective appreciated…
It’s noon on one of those double days created by an overnight train ride in sleeper class — a paranoid ride where the cop with the HK submachine gun calls you out the first time he sees you. “You — where is your luggage?” You point beneath the seat. “ALERT!”
He urges you to take it upstairs, so you press the pack to the top bunk and lock it to the support beam. You strap your money belt around your right upper thigh (and to do so, go pants around your ankles in the bathroom) and safety pin your wallet into your right pocket.
Return to the bunk through the darkened car and notice the officer has chosen to sleep on the bunk below you. No problem, no contraband here. You climb up and position your loafers atop the fan where suction can keep an eye on them.
Get fetal, clip your day pack — an overgrown purse, really — to your main pack, entwine your forearm in a shoulder strap and lay your head down to rest on an empty water bottle. Twist the cap to let out just enough air for the bottle to mold to the shape of your skull.
Bathroom breaks at 12, 2, and 4 — that’s what you get for playing Chug n’ Rehydrate — and wake at 4:57 a.m. to an empty car at Varanasi.
Paper-cup chai on the platform, a bit of energy because who knows what’s next. Find a rickshaw and don’t argue too hard, hotel arrival is the priority. Ride through the dark streets wearing your sunglasses as dust goggles, south to Assi Ghat.
The rickshaw drops you at Hotel Palace on Ganges, which, despite the French tourists coming down the stairs oohing and ahhing at the Ganges, is not Hotel Temple on Ganges. Find Hotel Temple by turning and looking directly behind you.
Give the rickshaw man 48 for a 40 rupee fare — a serious overpay — and inquire about a room. 350 and 550. 450 for the room with a view? Got it. Balcony, fan, and more mosquitoes than you’ve ever seen in your life.
Realize too late that the southeast window setup means you’re going to bake through the entire 104 degree day, that you’re going to call the place a hell station before you leave — but no matter. It’s simple enough and clean, ten bucks a day, and it has a desk, man, a desk!
A desk which now, at about 12:30 p.m., you’re neglecting in favor of lying naked on the bed, under the fan, with curtains drawn and lights off, the room lit Oz emerald by the sun through stained glass.
Ashish the Seatmate’s recommended Hotel Sharma (“with a huge sign on top”) never materialized, so I ended up booking a room at Hotel Samrat, whose rooftop sign I can see from my current address.
I didn’t choose it so much as walk into a decent-looking lobby on railroad flophouse row, find out there weren’t any rooms, ask about Hotel Sharma, get sloppy directions, and ask the burly checking-in Kerala man with the bright yellow Polo, “Could you just come point it out to me?” The linebacker and I walked twenty meters down the street and for once the touts stayed silent.
The hotel didn’t have a sign (in English), so I went in, said the token room melega?, followed the houseboy to the top floor up turret stairs, glanced at the room, dingy but with a big enough bed and a lock on the door, and went back down to try for a good price.
Took the room for a couple dollars, threw my stuff down, and only then noticed the crunched-up chips in the bed, the pan wrappers and cigarette butts behind the headboard, and the likely presence of bugs and seed throughout the mattress. In response, I hit the streets in search of Lucknow’s famous dried-fruit ice cream.
Found the ice cream — lassi, actually — and got force-fed further sweets by a curious sweet dealer.
Returned to Samrat to find a crowd in the lobby awaiting my arrival. “I don’t serve to foreigners,” the owner said. “You must leave.” Right now, fast. Half of the crowd seemed to be representatives of another hotel which had agreed to take me in.
Went upstairs with the houseboy who monitored the re-packing of the mosquito net and soap bar. I locked the door at one point which he immediately protested — he had more fear than I did, I guess.
The clerk returned my rent and tried to point me to the other hotel, but, “Nah, you guys are kicking me out. I’ll take it from here, thanks.”
Sought information from the cook at the thali joint across the street, who dispatched a 12 year-old boy to guide me to the originally intended Hotel Sharma. No luck — “This hotel not for you. You go to Mohan Hotel.”
The clerk drew a crude map and I set off via rickshaw, too tired to insist in Hindi that the ride would be worth only 11 cents, not 22.
I found and skipped the Mohan — amenities overkill — and continued up the road on foot. Just beyond, found a hotel recommended by the sweet dealer — Hotel Indore Regency. A guard, a cramped but air conditioned lobby, a bed (also top floor, last door), a bathroom with a lightbulb — I’ll take it. Negotiated a 15% discount and filled out carbon copy forms.
Freddie Mercury carried my bag to the room. I tipped him five rupees, popped a heartburn pill, took a cold shower and collapsed.
Everything went so smoothly over the first month here in India until about 30 minutes ago. A combination of the heat, the heavy hot kathi roll in my stomach, and the sight of my train coach flying toward the other end of the platform conspired to put me on my intended train’s doppelganger, headed in the opposite direction of my destination.
It surprised me that I made such a simple mistake. What with the familiar north-south corridor between Bhadohi and Mirzapur and the ever-present Ganges, I thought I had myself oriented. Until I got onto the Kashi Vishwanath Express headed east for Varanasi instead of west for Lucknow.
Why did I choose to climb into the luggage car? Was that really the best place to ask about the location of the AC car? And if I really only wanted to ask one question, wouldn’t it have been better to confirm the destination?
When I asked about the AC car, a luggage man in an orange reflector vest pointed toward the back of the train. I made a run for it, and when the whistle blew, I jumped into the closest door, a random sleeper car. I remember seeing the time on the digital station clock just before jumping in the door: 2:25. A full, clear 12 minutes before the scheduled departure listed on my ticket, but somehow this slipped by.
It was lucky to have picked not only that sleeper car, but also a seat with two guys who spoke enough English to inform me that the train was bound for Varanasi. But not to worry: In two hours it would reverse course and head back to Lucknow.
Even more clutch, when the train I held a ticket for and the train I was riding stopped next to each other in some forsaken railroad wilderness, the guys urged me to put away my camera, hurry, and switch trains. Zipping my bag, whipping on the frame pack, and shaking hands like a politician, I ran to the door, down the steps (so much farther without a platform), across two sets of tracks (I think I looked both ways), and to the door of an AC car. Locked.
Devoted maybe five seconds to banging on it with a flat palm, then ran alongside the train, loafers having trouble with the fist-sized stones underfoot. Next car sleeper class, also locked. Found the door at the car’s far end locked as well. Started putting together contingency plans in case either train started moving. Which door on the Varanasi-bound could I get back to? Any?
The next car had an open door — phew — and a woman with a basket of carrots about to make the ascent. I decided I’d rather be rude than left on the tracks, so I gave a “Hey–” and cut in front.
This time I entered the car asking “Lucknow? Lucknow?” like I’m the one selling snacks. A few nods confirmed the destination, so I plopped down and chugged all of the water in my bottle.
That problem sorted out, it was time to start playing catch-up internally.
The Jaipur Vodafone store has a line like the Bronx DMV. And why am I here? Because my phone disappeared somehow — not on Holi, mind you, but innocently the day before. Just up and left. Pulled a Houdini.
I had it at the PJ Exports office, maybe in the car, not when I got home. Or did I? Did I absently misplace it? Will I find it somewhere in my accumulated junk when I pack up tonight at the Sneh Deep guesthouse? Doubtful, because I didn’t hear a vibration when I tried calling it with the houseboy’s loaned phone, lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
After a last-ditch call to the guy whose office I thought I’d left it in didn’t yield success — “I’ve had my men looking all morning,” he said — I accepted the $22 Nokia as gone forever.
Talked with Manoj the guesthouse owner about options. He drew a map to the shop that would suspend the SIM card, maybe sell me a used phone. A buddy, apparently, who doesn’t speak much English.
Walked down, found the mobile man, and attempted to converse in Hindi. “Phone hoagie-yah.” His old-is-gold was far from bronze. He eventually revealed the Vodafone store in Raja Park. He explained the same to the autorickshaw driver, and we quickly agreed on half of his quoted transit price. Made our way down a crumbling road in the direction of the mobile man’s point.
Eventually a major intersection. Driver turned right, I glanced left and saw the Vodafone store.
And here I am, still waiting on a DMV line to get a new SIM card.
I’m a carpetman, people. Can’t be in India without a mobile.
Initiation ceremony — it conjures images of torchlight processions, Masonic robes, fratboys with paddle bruises, Navy SEALs hoisting logs. Initiation ceremonies mark a transition from one place to another, and it’s often more of a psychological step than a physical one.
While settling into what I’ll call “India mode” over the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to observe the initiation rites of travel — the tiny events that accumulate into a feeling of comfort in a foreign country.
Some are things that happen to us — things beyond our control. The choices the bus driver makes. The buffalo that blocks our path. The power outage in the internet cafe. The midnight buzzsaw beneath the hotel window. The stares.
Some we bring upon ourselves. The trip to the barber. What we accidentally step in. The foray into public transportation. The first bite of street food. The first dance.
Fellow travelers also have been noting their progress — they make announcements like, “This is my first hot kathi roll in 3 years!” or, “I thought I forgot how to squat.”
What initiation rituals help you immerse yourself in a journey?
Two days ago, I spent all 14 hours of the New York – Delhi nonstop flight worrying that my seatmate was quietly infecting me with something nasty.
He stayed bundled in his ski parka and wool hat the enitre flight. He had a telltale IV drip bandage on the back of his hand, sat eyes closed with a grimace, and didn’t eat a bite (except for the occasional pill from the bag in his pocket).
Has anyone else ever borne the weight of travel-induced hypochondria?
Maybe it comes from the battery of shots the docs recommend for going almost anywhere these days. Get ’em and you’re attuned more closely to the threats; skip ’em and add a dollop of risk to that awareness.
Maybe it’s an unavoidable side effect of Western culture, obsessed as we are with hand goop and Airborne and sneeze technique.
Maybe it’s just me. But I’d like to chalk it up to travel’s tendency to push us to find the story in any given detail — to make us reach for reasons and explanations to make sense of it all (no matter how quixotic it feels).
Pursuing countless such paths per second, it’s no wonder some of them swerve into fear. Some rightly so, some as false alarms. Moving forward, the goal becomes keeping the number of alarms roughly equivalent to the number of legitimate threats — and thus eliminating that pesky brick-in-the-backpack known as travel hypochondria.
The desert salt flat and bright blue sky met far away at foot-level. Massive trains crept by on twelve sets of tracks, their red and black and white bodies sharp against the imposing sky.
Every picture snapped became the best picture I’d ever taken.
A crowd of backpackers milled about, complete with keffiyehs. Are you catching the train to New York with us? they asked.
I’m from New York, I said.
Scrapwood littered the ground, part of a set of tracks being pulled up. I stacked it on a wide woodpile. Time had warped two pieces beyond value. Placed one atop the pile and tossed the other aside.
Found an underground workshop and climbed inside, down the ladder. In the back, a man leaned his torso through a curtain and worked atop a shrouded workbench. Even after reaching my camera through the curtain and clicking the shutter, I couldn’t see what he was up to.
The trains rumbled overhead. Figured my camera must have dirt on the sensor.
“But it is only after entering Pennsylvania (the whole eastern half of which is traversed by connecting lines) that one can fairly appreciate the extent and variety of scenery which the route affords. Mountain ranges of characteristic grandeur, cleft here and there by abrupt fissures to their very base, through which stately rivers lead their pomp of waters to the sea; rich and beautiful valleys, sometimes so narrow, and, withal, so picturesque, as to remind the traveler of Swiss cantons among the Alps, and sometimes allowed a broader and longer reach by the yielding mountain ranges that inclose them; forests that still retain the rugged aspect of their primeval wilderness, and romantic cascades. The mention of these features but feebly suggests the reality as seen by the eye. The reader must actually visit the Delaware Water Gap, he must himself climb the Pocono range, he must follow the Susquehanna in its winding course for a hundred miles, he must himself look upon the Valley of the Wyoming, with its tragic memorials and its beautiful villages, he must see with his own eyes the rich Valley of Lebanon, he must be drawn up the inclined planes of Mount Pisgah at Mauch Chunk, he must actually realize these things in his own experience, for it is beyond our power adequately to describe them. The sketches too, from the hand of the artist, good as they are, but suggest an outline of the real scene, destitute of the rich charm and body of reality which color imparts, as also of the element of vastness, so prominent in most of the scenes delineated.
To the scientific tourist there is a distinctive attraction connected with traveling in Pennsylvania generally, viz., the fact that in a geological sense this.state is literally the keystone of the Union, for in its peculiar formations is to be found the key to the geology of the whole country. It was in this state that the first ridges of the Appalachian range were thrown up, which were followed at intervals by other parallel ridges to the southward. There is also this additional peculiarity: that in Pennsylvania, more than in any other state, the coal measures have been preserved, having been simply opened up by the natural convulsions incident to the upheaval of mountain ranges, and not, as is generally the case, entirely swept away by an excess of violence.
It is to this peculiarity that Eastern Pennsylvania owes its rich treasury of anthracite coal, from which it derives the greater portion of its wealth. These anthracite coal-fields are accessible through two important connections of the Central Road, viz., the Lehigh Valley, and the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, as previously stated. Of course to the tourist there is a greater charm, as regards novelty, in the mechanical developments of resources of this nature than is the case in the ordinary appliances of agricultural industry, and for this reason, added to many others, the route which is under consideration is eminently fitted for the purposes of excursionists.
Considered in this connection, the route naturally divides itself into two—a longer one, extending nearly to the southern border of Pennsylvania, and a shorter one, included within the limits of the anthracite coal region. By the former of these we are conveyed as far as Hampton Junction, along the Central Road, where we take the Lackawanna Road through Warren County to the Water Gap, and from thence over the Pocono Mountain to Scranton. From this point, over the Lackawanna and Bloomsburg Road, we proceed through the Wyoming Valley to Northumberland, where we take the Northern Central Railroad to Harrisburg, the southern limit of our route, from which we return through Reading, Allentown, and Easton to New York, over the Philadelphia and Reading, the East Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley, and the Central Railroad of New Jersey.”
UPDATE: LivingInPeru.com, which knows this area way better than I do, DOES NOT recommend trying to walk out. Just sayin’. (Plus I guess the airlifts are almost over.)
Seriously — this is a repost of the instructions given by Cole Gainer to a friend on Facebook. Pass it on to anybody in there who might benefit:
If you decide to walk:
Leave early, bring water.
Walk down the rails until they disappear. Then just look left and follow the path up that’s been created. It goes by the hotel and is pretty easy to follow. (Look for my awesome Uruguay hat, I may have dropped it there.)
Take the low path and then head back on the rails. Some tricky parts come up where there are waves and stones to jump around but this bit is relatively easy and exciting.
Walk for about 20/30 minutes and then you will hit another area of washed out rail. WHEREVER THERE IS RAIL WITH NO GROUND UNDERNEATH – DO NOT CROSS IT!! Already made that mistake and it was no fun. By now the Peruvians should have established signs where to head into the jungle. We tried to leave stones and paper but they may be gone from new rains. Anyway, always look at least 100-200 feet before a washed out rail and you will see the path into the jungle that gets around it.
After this second crossing you walk for awhile with the regular astounding scenery and a couple land bridge crossings you need to run past one at a time so that they don’t slide beneath you. Who knows what differences there are now two days later but I’m sure the locals have found a new way around – and if they haven’t, then it’s your time to shine!
Keep walking, cross a rockslide on the rail, keep going. About 3 hours in you will get to a big long blue/white house. An old woman there will feed you all for a couple soles. At the end of her house the road is completely gone. Rest there then head into the jungle at the end of her house right before where the road drops off.
Follow the path, twist around some rock. Cross a creek, be wary of an angry dog, pass some houses, and get back on the rail. From here you can manage for awhile or at least make it up as you go. The first two jungle entrances I mentioned are the biggest pointers so far. Later, there are two more ones. One is marked by a log and some paper on it. If you tried to keep going you would cross rail with no land and just river underneath it. I did this. DON’T DO THIS! Go around in the jungle. Any time you think you can’t go any farther, just pull out the Boy Scout smarts and look for the path that I/we/someone has made around.
The last key jungle turn comes around marker 87. You’ll see sticks and rocks showing you where to head up into the cliffs. I made an arrow in the dirt but I bet it’s gone now. Go up in the cliffs and don’t come back down. Even when you see the rail somewhere around where marker 85-83 should be – don’t go to the rail. Another mistake I made. Stay on the high road, look at the mountains, pretend you’re on LOST, see how beautiful it is, pass the cemetery, keep going. Past the cemetery you’ll see ruins in the distance that people are working on, you can get on the rail there but then you go right back up through the ruins.
You start to see towns now but you need to avoid the rails even though you’ll see them. You’ll also start to die here. This is where my limp kicked in. Hopefully you’ll have rested much more than I did. For some reason I thought it was a race. When you hit the towns keep on the high roads – forget the rails, they are decieving and washed out every few hundred meters. If youre lucky you can maybe catch a ride into town now, the only problem is some of the town roads are flooded, but at least you’re out of the sticks.
You can do it, especially if you take it easy and don’t have that sinking feeling that your on your own and no one will know if you fall into the river and die. I’m sure the paths are well trodden now. The American embassy chick said they were expecting a few hundred people (mostly locals) to walk out in the following days. Unfortunately when I went she said there were less than 50 that had come out. The trail should be well blazed and it’s beautiful.
Climbed through the woods, up the steep face to the lookout. On the way up heard a parked car blaring the latest autotune, expected to find some homeboy and his girlfriend. Instead, a circle of people, lots of leather jackets, heads bowed, arms around each other. Big man in a suit saying a prayer in Spanish.
Crossed the road, made myself scarce, continued up the trail a ways, then stopped and looked down to the lookout. Just in time to see the big man in the suit dump an urn of tan ashes into the wind. The ashes didn’t plaster onto anyone’s face, just swarmed in the air through the crowd.
This recent New York Times piece highlights old age as a never-ending adventure, but there are far more desperate, fundamental reasons why elderly people are deciding they’d rather be abroad than at home.
Here are three less-discussed motivations for senior long-term travel (the first two are illustrated below by Lawrence Osborne‘s unflinching Bangkok Days):
To escape physical isolation–
He added that what Bangkok offered to the aging human was a culture of complete physicality. It was tactile, humans pressing against each other in healing heat: the massage, the bath, the foot therapy, the handjob, you name it. The physical isolation and sterility of Western life, its physical boredom, was unimaginable.
“There’s a reason we’re so neurotic and violent and unhappy. Especially as we get on a bit, no one ever touches us.”
To erase anonymity —
Farlo seemed to deflate a little. Did he really come here on a regular basis? No one recognized him. But then only money and youth get recognized. At a certain point, complete anonymity overtakes us, and people–not just women–look right through us as if we don’t exist.
We respond with instinctive bitterness to this loss of visibility, but we also recognize the first taste of our future extinction, and we accept it. There will be no reprieve from now on. But Bangkok is a city which in this instance does, after all, offer a brief reprieve. It comes via a simple gesture, which Farlo now executed. The invisible man raises a finger, one could call it the Finger of Assent, which indicates that after long prevarication and weighing up of the available options, he has decided to become financially available for the sexual act. This single gesture suddenly makes the anonymous man highly visible, and within a few seconds he has returned to the field of play upon which his antics, his desires, his neuroses, and his dubious tastes are all once again invested with the vitality, the fraudulent importance, of his youth. He finds himself returned to life, and his detestable anonymity evaporates all around him.
To die with dignity —
George Lundquist, 70, rocks gently in a wicker swing on his 2000 sq. ft. deck in Costa Rica. He looks directly into the webcam and tells us he built this house eight years ago. “I’ve been here ever since. I will never leave.” And he means it. Although he sells real estate to ex-pats, his sincerity is evident. At the end of his 10-minute video, he bares one of the root reasons why Costa Rica is his permanent home:
“I think the quality of death here is better than what you will find in the United States. I feel the doctors here are more involved and interested in my quality of life and my quality of death.”
With two houses already built on a former tobacco plantation (and ready to accommodate his future wheelchair), George isn’t much of a vagabond. He does, however, represent what might be a cousin of medical tourism: end-of-life travel. Not to be confused with the suicide tourism of Switzerland or Mexico, end-of-life travel seeks the ideal conditions and company for one’s final days, months, or years. This might be hospice care in Bangalore, a live-in nurse in Peru, or passing in one’s sleep on a beach in Nicaragua.
These motivations for senior travel are driven by pain, loneliness, and the prospect of a bleak future. They raise difficult questions. What does it say about our society when increasing numbers of our elders find the lifestyle and treatment abroad more desirable and affordable than the options at home?
Further, these motivations can’t be limited to the senior crowd. We younger travelers are quick to deny that we’re running away; we define our motivations as entrepreneurial, adrenaline-addicted, or enlightenment-seeking. But how often are we driven (at least in part) by similar feelings, and when will we start admitting it? If we keep silent about any part of what pushes us from home, how will life at home ever become bearable?
As a child, you often rode a bus that crossed a bridge over a river. You would look out the window at the river meandering toward its source in the mountains, and you would wonder. You grew up, went to college, found work on another continent and forgot about the river — for a while.
You put the work on hold and returned to your home, once again riding your childhood bus across the bridge. Now’s the time, you thought. A few days later you returned to the river, found a trail, and began to walk upstream, into the unknown.
This is the true and recent story of Vagablogging commenter and grown-up child Shalabh. The river is the Sutlej, and the bridge is in the tiny town of Slapper on the Chandigarh-Manali highway in Himachal Pradesh, India. Here you can read his raw and inspiring account of the improvised trek.
Shalabh started by knowing only that he would follow the river, and that the river led to the Indo-Tibet border at Shipki La. Expecting desolation, Shalabh’s curiosity drew him into the Kinnaur and Spiti valleys — two of the world’s most magnificent trekking regions.
“People had talked about the remoteness of these places, their inaccessibility and the dangerous road over the Sutlej gorge,” he says. “I had pictured a world where one would get nothing to eat, a narrow, winding, unpaved road would lead to a village, some hovels would form a village, which would double up as district headquarters. How wrong I was! If you are reading this diary, I advise you to at least try once what you have feared a lot since childhood.”
Shalabh’s trip often runs counter to standard trekking procedure, challenging beliefs and behaviors many of us might no longer question. Here are a few examples:
Maps aren’t essential — as long as you’re informed enough to know you won’t be entering areas where maps are essential. By sticking to the banks of the river and not getting close to the Indo-Tibet border, Shalabh got by without a map or guidebook. As he explained via email: “I just consulted a political map for 10 minutes before starting and noted down some place names. I figured more and more as I went along.”
Camino de Santiago in spring without a map? No problem. New York’s Adirondack Park in winter without a map? Bad idea. Still, I think a map is always handy, especially if there’s a volatile border in the neighborhood.
Go however you want. Shalabh’s trek combined walking and buses, reminding us that no matter how much we’ve planned to walk, there’s no penalty for hopping on a bus. Especially when it’s winter in the Himalayas and you forgot to fill your water bottle.
Go whenever you want. Speaking of winter, places don’t disappear in the off-season (although you might wake up and find a centimeter of ice on your window pane).
You don’t have to make a loop. Even if Shalabh had planned to take the high-altitude crossing from Kaza to Manali prior to starting, it’s blocked by snow in the winter. He ended up backtracking with a non-stop 32-hour bus ride.
Backtracking on a trek is often seen as undesirable, but it can bring an out-and-back element of pilgrimage to a journey. Shalabh’s account suggests that the ride home was a standalone adventure, and he only hints at subzero temperatures, landslide crossings, and slow-bus camaraderie.
There’s more, of course, but you’ll have to read the story.
What rivers have you been wondering about? When will you discover where they lead? (See Scott’s post from yesterday for more on this theme…)
We move to be moved, but we can be moved without moving.
Here’s a bit of local flavor from around my way: The Ice Harvest Train running from Steamtown National Historic Site (Scranton, PA) and picking up big blocks of the cold stuff in Tobyhanna, PA.
However, one of Chris Guillebeau’s suggestions in that last link is to carry a notepad everywhere you go. Hm — I have a pile of them my desk here in Bethlehem, PA. The fruits of keeping a pad in your pocket, but not stopping to look in the rearview mirror.
Writing it down doesn’t cut it, you have to take the time to type it all in. Which I haven’t. Yet. But I like to think there might be a couple blog posts in there…
Doing something 80% of the way is more frustrating than doing nothing.
Here’s to a productive 2010!
Thoughts?
UPDATE 1/5: Notebooks almost all in. I’m happy with the word count. And here’s a link to skip straight to Joan Didion’s essay On Keeping a Notebook.
Travel can be like walking on a frozen lake. Although logic tells you it’s safe, it’s hard to ignore the stomach-churn of vulnerability. Your first few steps might be cautious, but soon you’re jumping, stomping, and sliding.
Here are some other similarities between travel and ice fishing, courtesy of a family trip to New Hampshire’s Grassy Pond on Christmas Eve:
Getting a grip is your responsibility. Sometimes the ice is covered in snow, its surface just like the ground you’ve left. Other times, you’ll step from gravel to slick black ice, and you better have brought your ice creepers (mini-crampons). How do you keep your footing while traveling? A phrasebook, cultural awareness, iodine tablets, glacier glasses, resourcefulness, what else?
Don’t freak out, things are settling into place. Ice releases unnerving quakes and pops (and even visible cracks) as it settles and adjusts. Although it’ll feel like your world is out of control — and it is — the result is increased stability and support. Travel also has its moments of nervous uncertainty which serve to establish and reinforce your relationship to the road.
Danger lurks in fast currents. If you’re going to run into problems, it’s likely to be where the action is. Sounds self-explanatory, except that the action is often under the surface. With a bit of research and a keen eye, however, you’ll know how to skirt the thin-ice trouble spots. And if you have to risk it, at least have an exit strategy.
Today and tomorrow might have nothing in common. Ice conditions can radically change in 24 hours or less. Travel is just as unpredictable, and rewards adaptability just the same.
Sometimes you’ll get your bait stolen. Neither fish nor stories like to show up on schedule. They prefer to make a fool of you while you’re trying to hook ’em. They’ll tease you, make your investment vanish, and elude your grasp. No matter — the big ones that get away tend to come back and bite when you least expect it.
Don’t forget the Gluvine. Red wine with apples, oranges, sugar, cloves, and cinnamon (or share your own recipe below), heated over a fire. Take time to balance things out by kicking back with your favorite cup of relaxation.
While ice fishing and traveling, you’re suspended between two worlds. By poking holes in the barrier, you can find sustenance. It’s a rare pursuit — many have never had the chance or are afraid to try. Others take it further and are only satisfied by complete submersion.
What about you? How thick (or thin) is the ice you travel on?
By running away, Laura Dekker proved she’s ready to sail around the world. It’s about time the Dutch courts get out of her way.
When most teenagers are grounded, their parents tell them to stay in the house. Not so for 14 year-old Laura Dekker–when she proposed an attempt to become the youngest sailor to circle the globe solo, her government ordered her to stay in the Netherlands.
Just to be sure, they placed Laura under state supervision through (at least) next July. Maybe the government thought they’d settled things. But imagine if your government ordered you not to travel. Life would get itchy, fast.
According to her dad, the scrutiny led to a “negative spiral.” The sailor sank until last Friday, when she grabbed $5,000 cash and disappeared.
Not that there wasn’t warning: In response to being stifled, Laura said she’d try to capitalize on her dual citizenship with New Zealand and attempt the record from there. However, it’s unclear whether she fled with hopes of launching her journey, or if she just flipped out and bounced.
Unfortunately for Laura, she’s not very good at hiding. Mere hours after an international alert announcing her disappearance, she surfaced in St. Maarten. She’d crossed an ocean, but still was easy to find.
That alone should be enough to persuade the Dutch government to let her sail.
Dry, miniature snowflakes fell on Bethlehem yesterday, leaving the city sparkling. Residents raised hoods, locked arms, tucked chins, and squinted eyelids against the flying snow.
Throughout the storm, pizza delivery drivers trafficked their cargo with little regard for personal safety. Around 7 p.m., a teal Neon with a silver spoiler, Dominoes sign, and supreme confidence barreled downhill on Broad St., sending crosswalk walkers leaping for the curb.
Taqueria Mexico Lindo on Main St. stayed open for business, but at the peak dinner hour only one sleepy couple sat huddled over the baseboard heater, entranced by Lady Gaga on the flatscreen. The waitress devoted long stretches of attention to a laptop with impunity.
A duo of ATV’s raced through Bethlehem’s alleyways, passing a police car which declined to intervene.
Someone, somewhere, slipped and cracked a tailbone.
Forget steel. American Weirdness is booming in the Lehigh Valley.
Today’s headline: Teacher dead from heroin overdose on a school night. A 24 year-old biology teacher. At a high school 28 miles south on the previous day, the same drug lulled a girl to sleep in class.
Bowhunters recently found a decomposed body in the woods near our new casino.
Last Saturday night, someone leapt out of an Infiniti and stabbed a pizza guy in the butt with a pen knife. Thieves are raiding boarding houses, slipping through unlocked front doors and systematically robbing residents at gunpoint.
All the while, Bethlehem is up in arms over an unprecedented hot dog cart, and is four City Council votes away from gifting the town’s historic societies the right to deny any and all vendor applications (and in the process, banning book vendors–sorry, only food, drinks or flowers permitted).
A 65 year-old man in Allentown who bragged about the size of his bank withdrawal ended up smashed to death with a brick. (His former roommate is suspected.) This is what comes to mind as I awake from a nap, without having done any particular research.
We’re America. Recently Obama even dropped by to pick up some anecdotes for a pep talk to the nation.
Everywhere you travel, you’ll always end up naked with a certain stranger: The shower. The (near) daily ritual of bathing is a sensory riddle, forcing you to figure out a place on the most basic level.
Sometimes it’s easy and you have a predictable, jet-infused tub to soak in, with surround sound speakers and fluffy white towels.
But most scenarios aren’t as agreeable. Often you’re lucky if the water’s clear. Are you willing to find out if it stings your eyes, or do you clench them shut? Do you worry and spit if you swallow a few drops, or just wait and see what happens?
Will you be forced into a turf war with roaches and spiders?
Where on the spectrum of water pressure will today’s shower be? Every variation demands you adapt the soaping and rinsing technique you’ve grown to love. There’s the hand-held shower head with the water pressure of a coffee maker, forcing you into one-handed contortions. There’s strong but erratic pressure, with renegade needles of water fighting for access to your ear canal.
The water temperature is ice cold, but you relish the chill because you’re covered in tropical sweat and will be drenched again by the mere act of toweling off. Or miraculously, there’s an unlimited supply of muscle-massaging heat at 3700m. Or all of a sudden you realize you’re planning your day around the weak warmth of the first come, first served solar shower. Most likely, though, a travel shower will jump from boiling to frigid and back, only enjoyable for milliseconds at a time as you finesse the dial like a safecracker.
Afterward, it’s tough to dry yourself as thoroughly as at home. Because of pack weight concerns, you’re only carrying a hand towel or swim chamois. Or no towel at all, and so you opt for the hostel pillowcase. Or maybe the beach outside your door urges you to air dry.
Sometimes a shower’s no shower at all–it’s a bucket. A multipurpose tap midway up the wall. A river. Your head dunked in a town square fountain. And maybe you too have used palmfuls of water to attempt ablutions in an airplane bathroom.
However you try to get clean, there’s one thing that won’t wash off: Your immersion in an unfamiliar place.
How has the unpredictability of bathing affected your travels?
One of the first instincts upon a change of location is to start thinking in terms of parallel existence–comparing hours, schedules, routines, and so on.
Sitting on the roof of the hotel, staring at the moonlit Taj, you think, “I’d be walking into work right now.”
This isn’t so much looking back, but looking sideways. Conditional thinking: If I hadn’t decided to make this trip, I would be…
But you made it. You’re here. Not there. I don’t think such comparison is a rewarding outlook, yet I found that line–I’d be walking into work right now–on page one of my India journal.
So why employ this perspective? To relish in new-found freedom? To put an economic spin on the trip and force yourself to make the most of it (to get your money’s worth, considering the lost earnings)? To believe you’ve finally figured things out? To coordinate a prank call to a friend?
The preparation of a feast is underway. Just-cut string beans, snow peas, potatoes. Scents materializing. Cabinet doors flying open and threatening foreheads, then smacking closed with a shot.
A dozen socks competing for space on the tile floor. Bubbling oil and fast chopping. Aboriginal techno from an MP3 player. Water running.
The chaos is streamlining into a simultaneous finish. The wiped-off table is still waxy. I turn to see Sherwin glugging wine into a pot, wine left over from last night. It’s like a fuse is burning down.
Why do I feel like Thanksgiving is right around the corner?
The lines above are from a journal I kept in Berlin in May 2005. I returned to the journal last night in a desperate effort to find something to blog about today, and stumbled across those notes.
Travel gives us so many moments that are mini-Thanksgivings. Let’s give thanks for that.
What That Percentage Increase in Tourism Really Means
November 18, 2009
The number of trekkers on Nepal’s Annapurna Circuit/Muktinath Pilgrimage grew 25% in the 2009 season–but what does that mean?
According to the article linked above, it means that guesthouse owners hoping for foreign clients are refusing to serve Nepalese trekkers.
It’s unclear whether the owners are actively turning away their compatriots while waiting for foreigners, or just pricing most domestic trekkers out of the market. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this has been going on for a while.
Not everyone is able to afford a month-long trek, even (especially?) in their own country. But when you invest the time and money to journey into one of your country’s most beautiful areas, only to learn you’re not welcome–that hurts.
Ideas?
PS — If anyone finds the link to the original ACAP stats, please post it in the comments, thanks.
Having lived on the Camino for only about 12 weeks total, I’ve seen at least four film crews and have been suspicious of all of them. I’ve thought that their efforts were in vain, that the kaleidoscopic experience couldn’t be captured by a team that rides in a van and sleeps in hotels.
But after watching the above trailer, I don’t care where the crew slept. It looks like the dangerous combination of professional production and spiritual journey may have been successful.
American Pilgrims on the Camino will hold hospitalero training from March 16-18, 2010, in Winter Park, Florida. (The training is part of the larger National Gathering, which includes the Gathering of Pilgrims from 3/19 to 3/21 and Spiritual Retreat from 3/21 to 3/23.)
If you’re a North American former Camino pilgrim and you want to volunteer as a hospitalero, training with American Pilgrims on the Camino essentially guarantees you a spot.
(However, 2010 being a Jubilee year, the usual supply and demand figures might be out of whack, which could work for or against you. Not sure.)
Either way, APOC training is a fantastic experience for anyone seeking to explore the practice of hosting on an accumulated-ancient-knowledge level. Or if you just want to learn to cook rich red stews.
Inspired by her experience on the Camino de Santiago, retired reporter Suh Myung-sook has led the creation of over 250 km of wildly popular walking trails on the South Korean island of Jeju. More trails are in the works, and I’m guessing the official route will soon encircle the island.
As for walkers already looping Jeju–there must be a percentage who reach the end of the official trail and keep right on going.
And while we’re talking about loops and route planning, any developer’s next step would likely make Jeju Olle an @-shaped route, with a trail to the 1,950m peak of Mt. Halla as the final stage.
As this project goes forward, hopefully its leaders are careful about J.O.’s impact on the island. It’s an island, after all. The options for crowd-scattering alternative routes are pretty slim.
In the first nine months of 2009, Jeju Olle attracted–ready?–200,000 walkers. By comparison, 100,000 pilgrims completed the 800ish km French Route of the Camino de Santiago in 2008. My rough math shows that J.O. is faced with the challenge of supporting a pilgrim density that’s eight times greater (OK, 8.1) than the primary route of the Camino de Santiago. And that’s before Ms. Suh’s worldwide marketing plans kick in.
PS — The island is a volcano. PPS — With such a surge, is it possible to promote the island as an ecotourism destination with a straight face?
Update–from the comments: “I walked Jeju Olle trails a while ago and found some fragile routes were crumbling down after they were beaten relentlessly by hundreds of hikers every day.”
I haven’t read the book nor gone shoeless (yet), but McDougall’s original article and the media swirl around his book have helped me develop a new view of running. No longer mere exercise, I see it as the opportunity to cover some ground.
Whereas 30 minutes used to be a good workout, now I’ll go out and ramble for an hour, an hour and a half. No idea of the mileage. Up the mountain, into the woods, looping, looping back, stopping to have a staring contest with a deer, walking whenever. This sustainable lope goes beyond mimicking “the behavior of the persistence hunter” for the end of physical fitness: It creates a direct psychological link to the antelope hunter and mammoth spearer within.
From the perspective of place, this returns us (in thought, at least) to our ancestral hunting grounds, the root homestead. In a dispersed world, that’s probably not the same ground covered on a Saturday jog. By running with this mindset, you might be surprised how far you’ll travel both mentally and physically.
And if you live and run where you’ve been all along, what’s that like?
Tonight during a World Series commercial break, I ran into the following passage which gives an interesting take on the whole art/place thing. It’s from the article At Seaby Jonathan Raban, published in Outsideback in 1996.
The real heart of my boat is its library. There are few sea books in it–the inevitable coastal pilots, tidal atlases, and one or two grim volumes with titles like The 12-Volt Bible. But when I’m galebound on the dank and gloomy Northwest Coast, I’m in no mood to read Conrad or Melville. At anchor in a lightless British Columbian inlet, where matte black cedars crowd ’round the ruins of a bankrupt salmon cannery and the rain falls like ink, I shall pine for brilliance and laughter, for rooms full of voices.
So, on the long shelf in the saloon, overhung by the gimballed oil lamp, are Lolita and Madame Bovary, the novels of Evelyn Waugh (all of them), Dickens’s Great Expectations, Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Byron’s Don Juan. There are books by friends and acquaintances, like Paul Theroux, Richard Ford, Cees Nooteboom, Ian McEwan, David Shields, Martin Amis.
I rejoice in the thought that my eye might lift from a page of Waugh (let it be Julia Stitch, in bed, at the beginning of Scoop) to the sight of a black bear snuffling in the driftwood at the water’s edge: nature outside the boat, society within, and just an inch of planking between the world of one and the world of the other.
What's Hiding at the Intersection of Art and Place? (Vagablogging)
November 4, 2009
Meeting an artwork at the right time and place can unlock new reserves of understanding. However, the same work in a different setting can bring you down like a black banana peel.
Let’s take music as an example. What happens when melody is mixed with new people and places? Stan Getz can drop the temperature in Goa, while bossa nova on tiny speakers can heat up a Québec ice shanty. Listening to Kind of Blue might feel clichéd in New York but subversive in Moscow. Raw funk can reveal both the absurdity of a too-precise train station and the logic of Kolkata’s chaos.
Books can also color a journey. Ducking into Philip Roth’s or Don DeLillo’s America, for example, can help you measure how far you are from home (and motivate you to stay on the road). When native speakers of your language are scarce, a book can provide rich conversation–it’s no surprise we contemplate desert island reads.
What about when you and your story have the same location? Reading about a place while visiting it can help you spot details you would have overlooked. But you also risk having the real and the written fail to gel, creating disillusionment, dissonance, or frustration (with either the work or the place).
How about movies? If you watch a Western movie while immersed in a non-Western culture, you might see home in a new light (the theater experience contributes, too). With such insights, it becomes easier to spot cultural contrasts and similarities–a step toward understanding and acceptance. Be prepared, though: While movies can help build appreciation, they can also trigger envy, discomfort, impatience, or homesickness (for starters).
How have music, books, movies, and other art affected the way you experience a place? Have you realized any benefits or drawbacks to feeding such work into your brain while traveling? What intersections of art and place have floored you?
It was the perfect recipe for transformation: A month-long trek around a clump of stupendous mountains. An ancient pilgrim path. A motorcycle through the jungle. A summer of scraping by with a baritone sax.
So what happens when you finally reread your journals and realize the pages are filled with mental dandruff? Quick shots of confusion, desire, doubt, anxiety, concern, what ifs, hilarity, hot temper, the list goes on. You might ask, “What was I thinking?” or, “How could I have been concerned with this crap?”
But really–does this mean you didn’t get the inner journey? Does the absence of fully-formed ah-ha’s devalue the experience?
I’d urge you to take heart. The writing doesn’t make sense because you were working overtime to make sense. What were obvious associations at the time now require lucky reverse engineering to comprehend, if they can be pieced together at all. Or maybe the snippets point elsewhere–clues are often hard to find, frustrating, and ambiguous.
You had the time and freedom to drop down the rabbit holes, far down. It’s no wonder that, in the flat light of the familiar, what you brought back seems cracked. But these aren’t the words of an incoherent stranger–they’re yours. Although the surface might look like so much debris, a veritable landslide at times, there’s no mistaking that it’s the work of seismic shifts.
To put it another way, you brought home an entire river–now comes the challenge of panning for gold.
I’m getting homesick for travel, for places to shine despite their normality. Buying groceries in a May Berlin drizzle, knowing the next few days will also be cold and wet. Homesick for the apartment we went in and out of in the rain, and how that added to its value.
Maybe it’s something (or lack thereof) from infancy that makes me miss being swaddled into a city by my host, playing follow the leader, ducking into the subway seemingly at random, having to watch for an eyebrow pop or head nod as the stations tick off, and following again through the crowd as tunnels are chosen and we eventually emerge I don’t know where. Not having to deduce atmosphere and vibe from façades, guidebooks and a peek in the door (fun as that is), just being towed into pre-certified spots—for the view, the music, the terrace, the crowd, and always a drink.
Homesick for lying on the lawn of Vienna’s greenhouse, leaving to buy a chain-food lunch (low funds) and then back to the grass. The worst seats in the Budapest Opera. Living with four Italian dudes in Granada and being force-fed Illy four times a day. Rolling the clichéd cig-after-the-morning-coffee because the Drum just happens to be there. All the things I never planned to do.
You too ever?
OK, so this post might have appeared on a prior blog about two years ago, but it needed to be here, today. A necessary place at a certain time. I’m sure you can relate.
No matter which continent they’re on, fort cities will pour a cauldron of boiling wonder over your head.
Fort cities are built on prime real estate–land that someone really, really wanted to hold onto. Whether the city proper is surrounded by walls or huddled at the foot of a fortress, there’s likely to be winding alleyways and an ancient market. You’ll find the old, tight neighborhoods of families who once cozied up to the army, hoping for a piece of protection, not to mention a stable economy.
There are superior views, made all the more enticing by the terrain you’ll have to scramble up to reach the lookout. You’ll hear some juicy tales and see the scenes of crimes and scandals. A fountain that caught lopped-off heads and gushing blood, for example. Chances are the fort’s fallen by now, and if it hasn’t, well, that’s a story too.
Fort cities have a rich culture, either being situated at a strategic geographic crossroads, or through sheer size and import having attracted ideas, trade, and invaders. And because forts tend to be the last part of a kingdom to fall, there might be the resonance of a recent changing of hands. You can feel the lingering presence of the previous owner, all the way down to the landscaping, the furnishings, and the smell.
Fort cities have a leftover charge of power in the air, as if they could explode into battle again at any moment. But they also have pockets of disarming beauty, possibly created in an attempt to tolerate living behind thick walls. Gardens, palaces, sacred spaces, architectural flights of fancy– these statements of love are often paraphrased throughout the city. Over time, their influence makes the fort city less of a stronghold and more of a refuge. In other words, just the type of place a wanderer needs from time to time.
Made a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh last weekend with my dad for the homecoming football game. Quick domestic travel, always a welcome complement to the long international breed. Left the Lehigh Valley at 4 pm on Friday and returned 29 hours later. Just over 19 hours in the Steel City.
It’s amazing how a car, a road and a few tunnels makes it easy to cross a mountain range on a rainy fall night. The rest areas out past Harrisburg were full of Pitt gear, as expected. Hats, hoodies, umbrellas. With a couple logos, it would be easy for an outsider to ingratiate.
Around 10 pm on Friday, we bought ice cream sandwiches from a gas station for dessert (dinner was our first-ever trip to Chick-Fil-A). Waited in line behind a man in muddy, oily sweatpants as he consulted with the attendant on new types of chew, his Cub Scout-age son beside him. The young attendant had a cornflake-catching black beard and an old Steelers hat pulled low with hair winging out on all sides. Eyes-and-mouth-obscuring hair.
Pittsburgh used to be just a fort at the confluence of three rivers. Washington got licked out here, then tried again and had better results.
The innkeeper at the Super 8 motel has big silver wire rims, white hair to his chin, and a white moustache. Yet strangely he doesn’t look over 35. This man programs wake-up calls and is our last line of defense against oversleeping. We trust him.
Dad and I fell asleep quickly in the absence of wall-banging neighbors, but woke to a screaming baby at 5 am. A check of the cell phone revealed that I’d missed three calls from RESTRICTED between 1:12 and 1:35 am. No message.
What’s the history of Room 216 in the Monroeville Super 8 just outside of Pittsburgh? We don’t know, and we’re OK with that. Our assumption is that Linda K. (as per the tip envelope) keeps it relatively clean. Motels get a bad rap. Psycho, From Dusk Till Dawn, No Country For Old Men — what are the other classic motel movies? How frequently do people die in the shower? Dad, pulling out of the parking lot: “For 53 bucks, that was adequate, wasn’t it?” And that’s really the only question. (Despite the location across the street from The Cypher Co. Industrial Hose.)
Parked underground and rode from the U of Pitt campus to Heinz Field in one of many school buses packed with students. The radio played “Baby Got Back” and the girls in the seat behind us sang along.
We dedicated the day to food, football, and interstate highways, with success. Free Yuengling and fat wet sandwiches while the Panthers disemboweled South Florida, 41-14. Pitt didn’t punt nor give up a sack.
The city’s unbroken spell led to a second round of ice cream sandwiches at the Sideling Hill rest stop, only two Turnpike hours from home.
Do you play by different rules at home and on the road? When surrounded by the familiar versus overwhelmed by the new?
It’s a massive challenge to merge the travel self and the home self. To approach the world with open intensity no matter what part of the planet happens to be underfoot.
Do any of the following divides sound familiar?
Work / No work Save / Spend Established friends and family / Meeting new people Cooking / Buying meals Car or bike / Buses, taxis, etc. Clutter / Essentials Presentable / Grungy Scheduled / Improvised Routine bites of busy / Big wide life-changing experiences
What Didn’t Go Down in Bethlehem, PA
I took a walk today trying to catch the fall colors with a camera. Didn’t stop in a cafe or bar, didn’t even grab a slice of pizza. The root reason being that I’m saving for travel.
Crossed paths with some strangers:
The green-sweatered man behind the counter at Pat’s News Stand, tired of watching browsers leave fingerprints on the covers of his magazines.
Two homeless guys tossing crumpled cans off the Fahy Bridge.
A waitress sitting in the sculpture garden drinking out of an oversized Styrofoam cup.
Kids popping noisemakers in front of the corner bagel shop.
A church caretaker sweeping the steps.
There were a few words exchanged with some of these folks, sure. But not enough–the curiosity mechanism is still bugging me about each of them: Where would it have gone?
These are the people I’d have talked to if I were traveling.
Just posted my Camino de Santiago journal here. If you’re thinking of making the pilgrimage, I hope it gives you an idea of the thoughts and concerns the walk is liable to catalyze in your consciousness.
If you’ve walked the Camino before, I hope it takes you back.
Unassuming on the outside. Just your standard red Baedeker from 1959, right?
Free prize inside! One ticket to the Granada Cathedral, possibly still good.
Another souvenir of Granada–sketch of the Alhambra carving, “There is no Conqueror but God.”
What’s the $149.60? The exact sort of unexpected expense that Spain could have produced on the second Friday in August, 1961? Doubtful. The amount works out to $1,065.30 in today’s dollars. The cost of the trip so far?
Now here’s a place to check out. Riells del Montseny, nine and a half kilometers into the mountains above Breda. (Not sure about the year-and-a-day timespan noted.)
Breda (not to be confused with Velázquez’s Breda) seems promising. It’s not mentioned in the Baedeker guide (and neither is Riells). To get there, take Autopista 7 northeast from Barcelona (though the parallel Carretera 35 might be more fun). The road travels between the Parque Natural de Montseny and Parque Natural de Montnegre-Corredor. It climbs to the source of the Río Besos, crests near Can Pradell de Baix, then descends along the widening Río Tordera.
Breda is reached by going over the crest and past the Montseny park, then hooking around into its backyard. Riells seen below at marker A.
Though I still prefer walking, I’ve always been inspired by the Honda Africa Twin. The tires are close to cogs, and the brush guards on the handlebars imply a familiarity with tight spots. The seat is a big foam slab, a nod of understanding to the desire for long days on the trail.
It’s loaded with massive double headlamps for those times when the only likely oncoming traffic is a herd of sleepy rhinos. Beneath, two rubber accordions circle the shocks, alluding to the fact that the front tire is happy to bounce its way through life.
The sound of a motorcycle is shorthand for adventure, but hearing this bike won’t spark any wanderlust daydreams–it’ll get you packing. Honda created this rough siren song by mixing a boss hog’s throaty negotiations with the high-pitched clicking and sliding of (I’m guessing) the Mars Rover. Driving an Africa Twin in the city is a subversive absurdity, like wearing crampons to a ballroom dance.
Unfortunately, I don’t ride, so I can’t tell you if this is a good bike or not. (Internet research suggests it is.) All I know is that the sound, the image, the thought, and the YouTube videos of the Africa Twin make me want to get my boots muddy.
Have you ever been inspired by something with an engine? How do wheels factor into your travels (or aspirations)?
Big News of the Day: The Innkeeper’s Guide (a k a How to Be an Innkeeper/Hospitalero on the Camino de Santiago…or Anywhere Else) has been revised and posted on Amazon.
Do you want to volunteer as a hospitalero on the Camino de Santiago? Do you currently host guests who travel by foot, bike, or horse, staying briefly? Do you aspire to host in such a place? (Huts, hostels, ecolodges, you name it.) If so, this guide is for you.
It’s not so much a ‘how to’, but rather a collection of thoughts on hosting in liminal, rough, and/or weird places.
Been revising and reshaping this thing since I had the chance to volunteer as a hospitalero on the Camino de Santiago in Summer 2007.
When it comes to work and travel, the groove sets up the payoff.
Consider Funk. A bass lick is all the more nasty when the bass has been hanging in the pocket, keeping a low profile. When after seven or maybe 15 bars of solid groove, it pops.
Drops all constraints, steps forward, goes deeper, and realizes its core identity of BASS. In doing so, it opens up a new horizon, or tweaks the accepted perspective, or builds on someone else’s idea. These recurring low-end contributions deliver to The Listener what can only be called inspiration.
Yeah, the groove sets up the payoff.
Bassists don’t only play licks, drummers don’t only play fills. Most of the time, they just groove. The groove has to fit, of course. Sometimes it might be a little cheesy, but that’s OK. It’ll step into something new and overwhelming (if only briefly) soon enough.
I’m a giant compared to Ecuadorians and Peruvians. I’ve literally formed scabs on the top of my head from hitting countless low passageways.
People here love Latin Music. I love Latin Music. They love dancing. I love dancing. It’s a great fit.
I have not seen more homeless people here than I see in any major US city.
I’m almost becoming desensitized to amazing scenery.
Quitting my office job and ridding myself of nearly all of my possessions in order to make this trip was very scary at the time. It’s turning out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Adam invited me to make a weekend trip from Granada up to Santiago de Compostela back in the grand old study abroad days of 2003.
We rode out to Lavacolla and walked the last stretch of the Camino de Santiago. Missed the 6 a.m. bus to go clean up the oil spill. Got down with Albariño. Attempted Gallego. I think it rained the whole time, and we didn’t see the sun until the plane back to Granada broke through the clouds.
Without this introduction, would I still have ended up walking the Camino two years later? Maybe, but doubtful.
Nick Kristof released the winners of the “Half the Sky” competition last Friday, selected from over 700 submissions of positive work going on around the world, right now. He writes,
“…one of the things that struck me was how often the intercultural engagement involved Westerners who were as much beneficiaries of the process as the local people.”
In other words, Travelers! I know you want to gain Experiences, but seriously, you can give without being miserable!
It’s a backhanded challenge to Westerners whose travels add little to the local quality of life. (Straight cash infusion doesn’t count.) We receive so much from the people whose countries we visit, and so seldom return the favor.
It’s not a condemnation, but a reminder. This adventuresome breed of travel which we spend so much time blogging about, sharing stories of, preparing and sacrificing and saving for, anticipating and attempting to explain to our friends–it’s just a stepping stone: Deeper connection, growth, and understanding is possible when we expand beyond getting and start giving back.
The give and take of travel is a delicate question. Nobody wants to be made to feel like they’re in debt. But still, after reading about those projects, I felt that a solid 80% of my travels have engaged the world as a personal playground. That is, a place to slide, swing, and hit the monkey bars, all while developing fundamental skills I can later use to compete.
Others might relate–much of the online discussion is focused on making the most of our (own) travel experiences–what someone with a passion for syllables might call phenomenological enrichment. Our travel gains fall on a spectrum from Mai Tais and hammocks to life skills and perspective we can bring home (or onward to our next independent location).
Why did I end up giving 20% of my time to (arguably) benefit my hosts? A tendency to hit walls. For any given place, once a certain volume of stories has been deposited in the notebook–whether acquired through hedonism, personal growth, or something in between–I become convinced that further fulfillment is only obtainable through some sort of service. (The dual benefit that Kristof mentions.)
We can’t each be expected to give on the same level at the same time. Somebody’s first big trip might be for service, though the urge might hit another after 19 years and 93 countries. Some might need to make a lifetime out of it, others an afternoon.
What’s certain is that wayfaring, open-to-experience travel has been known to lead to the desire and commitment to make an impact somewhere. Such travel is both a shakedown and an education. It helps us decide where and how we want to contribute. Maybe even why.
While walking by a slow freight train the other day, I wondered what would happen if a boxcar of hobos passed and yelled, “Jump on!” Really animated hobos–flapping the sleeves of their flannel shirts, waving their bindles.
What will happen when you get the chance to plug a stick of dynamite up the posterior of your current existence? This day, this minute. Choose. Especially if you really like the way things are going right now. Gotta choose.
Look up at the sky. This is what the sky looks like when you have the chance to switch tracks. I have the feeling that, sooner or later, each of us will be put on the spot. The boxcar of hobos is going to roll by. Could be good, could be bad. Only one way to find out. Maybe you’ve already seen it? Or maybe it slides by more often than we realize?
(And yes, it is a freight train–so if we don’t see it, are we in the dark? If we don’t hear it, are we submerged? If we don’t feel it rumbling, are we floating through space?)
The road likes to rough us up. But have you ever had it do the opposite? I mean, have you ever had a realization that you’ve been living in unexpected luxury? Been caught off-guard by your own cushy routine, and felt somehow changed because of it?
Here’s how it happened to me in Darjeeling:
Sitting here after midnight in Darjeeling, I’ve just realized that if I ordered a pizza for delivery, I’d have to give my address as Ajit Mansions 113. How did I get here? I’m not a Mansion Man. But then again, could any of my peers working the front desk pay 400 rupees a night for a room with a fireplace, bathroom, and cracked window?
I have a chaise lounge in here, for God’s sake. A vanity table, an 1890 painting, a mantel with a bottle of gin. Red velvet curtains to fling open in the morning for a southeast view of the valley. And look there at the writing desk, covered in scribbled-on clippings. It’s like the work of a dictator in exile.
Arun brings tea and three different newspapers to the room every morning on schedule. I slipped him twenty rupees to unlock the roof access, just so I could lounge atop the water tanks and take in the spectacle of the center of town. And the woman doing laundry on the neighbor’s rooftop below? I caught her eye, raised my glass, and grinned. She grinned back.
I sneak around the shell of this rotting place, use my key to jimmy the locks of disused rooms. Find passages into empty banquet halls stacked high with tables and chairs. I found a cupboard in the basement with biscuits and helped myself.
Jesus, I am a Mansion Man. What happened?
Similar experiences, anyone?
After a long stretch of self-reliance, it’s easy to be seduced by the simple pleasures of thorough hospitality.
Rather than turning luxury (and your response to it) into an ethical dilemma (for example, trading blows with the reflex of guilt), why not just enjoy it while it lasts?
Can Foreigners Buy Guns? Three Lessons from Kolkata, 2008
September 23, 2009
Dripping the obligatory Kolkata sweat, I bounded up a couple steps and through the door. Might be some cheap stuff in here. Stopped and scanned the three walls of dark brown rifles standing straight and serious like courtroom wood paneling.
Whipped off my sunglasses and looked the shopkeeper in the eye: “Can foreigners buy guns?” “No.” “Thank you,” and I left with mock urgency.
My friend might have punched my arm. He’s Indian, and according to my notepad he said, “You realize, man, that if anything goes down in the next three days with a gun, the cops are going to go to that guy, and he’ll say that some white guy with weird shades came in and asked if foreigners can buy guns.”
Yeah, it was a pretty random question. But (in retrospect) it accomplished three things.
1. It intersected the existence of an Upstate New York pizza man with that of a Kolkata arms dealer, just for a second, as the dealer answered what, for his line of work, is a legitimate question.
2. It let me try on another self. A man in the market for a firearm. Part of why travel increases the odds of self-discovery is the surplus of opportunities for casting aside your usual identity.
3. It’s worthwhile (and usually downright entertaining) to check out what you expect to be a dead end.
P.S. When I go back to Kolkata, the only cannon I’m shopping for is a baritone sax.
The other day I happened on a concert in the back of a jeans boutique. Right there in the waiting-for-the-bathroom hallway. A solo guitarist with princely hair, tight white jeans, cowboy boots and a scorpion belt buckle.
He introduced his song with, “This one’s called Wildwood. I wrote it after I had an experience there.”
What do you think of when you hear Wildwood New Jersey? I’ve never been there, and have only heard of it in passing. Never heard a wild or woody story, though the name tempts me to believe either could be acquired.
In a world of travel tale saturation (guilty as charged), it was refreshing that he didn’t ramble through a song-introducing story. By just saying “I had an experience,” he told us all we needed to know. He let us fill in the blanks and imagine the wildness. He forced us to work for it.
Hm…this is a place that’s inspired at least one songwriter. Might be a place to check out.
Have you walked across your city? Have you witnessed the bell curve of its development? Would you take the same route you’d use to drive? Or would you seek out some sort of alternate, foot-friendly route?
Yesterday I read about a back-up plan that many in Bihari keep in mind: Make the month-long walk to Calcutta and look for work or beg. After walking the Camino de Santiago, if Burgos and Leon come up together, the immediate thought is twelve days across the meseta… Some of the most fascinating imagery in Stephen King’s The Stand is of walks across a demolished America, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road only intensifies the scenario.
Think of where you drive most often in the 5, 10, 15, and 30 minute ranges. Consider your nearest big city (especially if you’re in one right now). How long it would take to walk to these places?
Bethlehem, PA, is an hour and a half of crumbling interstate west of New York City. But to walk along back roads and sidewalks until the eventual crossing of the George Washington Bridge and coda stroll down to Central Park–sounds like an adventure. 83.2 miles, according to Google Maps. Four good days.
Four good days is a guess. I have no idea what that walk demands. Don’t know what I’m a day’s or a week’s walk from. To know this place, I think I should.
Sure, the scenery in the Lehigh Valley is a notch or two below the Annapurnas, but it’s strange to have a better conception of the various routes from Pokhara to Muktinath than of the footpaths between my town and its immediate neighbors, not to mention the neighbors I’d have to ask for water along the way.
Not knowing my car’s transmission would soon be dead, I recently wrote something in praise of walking. Backhandedly, about the negatives of cars and even bicycles. Here it is:
Given the choice of any mode of transportation, I prefer my feet. I don’t have to lock them to a streetlamp before I go into the cafe. They don’t suck down gasoline, oil, rubber donuts, antifreeze, or Windex. I don’t need a ticket to take my feet, and I’ve never gotten ticketed for leaving them in the wrong place. Though they can leave me tired, the next day I’m the opposite of lagged. I don’t have to watch a speed limit, only my blisters and joints. Feet simplify the process of hm, let me take a closer look. They demand I haul only the essentials. Their convertible top is a hat. My feet aren’t capable of crushing toddlers on tricycles; when I run into someone, it’s a good thing. All my feet need from the gas station is a Christmas tree air freshener.
Then the car trouble showed up (as payback for a wandering eye?). As I waited for the diagnosis, I went from toying with the walking idea to feeling at the mercy of fate. To staring down a drastic lifestyle change. If the car’s kaput, how am I ever going to (fill in the blank)?
Not having a car is a position many Westerners (whose cities still lack quality public transportation) are put in only while traveling with a certain gusto. It’s no wonder that the prospect of living without a car carries the same what might happen? adrenal vulnerability as heading abroad with improvisation as the only plan.
If you’re looking for a way to prepare for travel (or to get your travel fix while home), try ignoring your car for a couple days. You can catch rides, use finicky buses, or just get out and walk the two miles to the grocery store. If you want a larger dose, a six to ten hour wander packs plenty of surprises.
The right mix of cigarette smoke and cologne puts me on a sidewalk in Granada. A grey-blue overcast sunrise through a crack in the blinds is another Utica snowstorm. The smell of rare wood burning (a piano, let’s say) is the rush of India.
The more places we visit, the more elsewheres we can be transported to by a strange cloud, a scent, or a song heard through the window of a passing car. Not surprisingly, it’s always the same few places that hit me the hardest. It’s places I’ve stayed in long enough to be able to guess at what’s going to be last to change.
Call it the Stray Dog Theory of Place–if you talk to it and pet it behind the ears, it’ll keep coming back. It can happen in as little as a week (less, anybody?), though a month or more is better. What also helps: Multiple trips to the same grocery store. Witnessing sunrise and sunset. An unexpected soaking or bout of shivers. Conversation with kids and old folks. Getting lost, helping someone find their way, finding a secret spot, sharing it. A routine, no matter how rickety.
I’m still a sucker for towering experiences, the big bangs that can define a town, city or country. Along with the in-the-moment adrenaline, an afternoon of Porsche in the Swiss Alps delivers an admirable stuffed Done That to hang over the mantle. But it is what it is. (Yes, been there.)
What I’m more curious about are the slow-to-emerge, long-term effects of prolonged exposure. The rippling impact of investing the time to know a place on the secret-handshake level. So far, I’ve found that the places you’ve given the most to will visit you when you least expect them, triggered by next to nothing, wherever you might be.
Travel deja vu, the return of a place’s State of Place. Elsewhere merging with and warping the present to create a new, unexpected moment of travel.
Looking forward to continuing the experiment.
P.S. Thanks for reading. There’s no way one post could have answered the whole question…
Who Cares If Your Car Eats Into Your Travel Budget?
September 8, 2009
You’re outwardly concerned about saving as much money as possible for travel.
So what happens when, en route to your Labor Day Weekend bonanza, your car starts giving a death rattle and limps the last 50 miles? When it appears that this might be the point at which an outside force places your lifestyle in greater alignment with your aspirations, and divests you of your cash devouring automobile?
My guess is that lots of travelers, maybe you included, wouldn’t want to give up their wheels. Resistance would precede buses and bicycles.
I’m painfully aware that a tank of gas equals a week’s room with bed, shower, and red vinyl couch in Kathmandu. But because I grew up next to a car collector and rally racer, used to deliver pizzas, and am American enough to believe in the freedoms bestowed by the auto, I had a particularly tough time this Labor Day weekend as I tried not to worry about losing my car. It looked like curtains.
Another post might provide the details, but here’s the quick story. The ugly clanking appeared around 7 p.m. on Friday, 3 hours into the journey. After a highway shoulder evaluation, transmission fluid top-off at the first gas station, and subsequent fingers-crossed to the destination, I parked it. Joined the country in a long workless weekend and got up at 6 a.m. today to visit the Volkswagen specialist.
The new transmission is going in tomorrow. For the price of a plane ticket to Bangkok.
There are plenty of things I’m willing to trade for long-term travel. But for now, short-term, spontaneous travel isn’t on the list.
Why I Turned Down a Year in Asia for Bethlehem, PA
September 1, 2009
A couple months ago, I told some friends and family that the time had come. That I’d been home almost a year, and would soon hit the road to teach English in Asia. Boom–gotta get out of here. Next stop: Daegu, Korea, or Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
We’re trained to follow through on what we say, to walk the walk. I certainly talked the talk this past spring–including to a handful of recruiters who could have had me in a colorful classroom by the end of July. It’s now the first day of September, and these places are on indefinite hold.
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would you want to hang around Pennsylvania?”
I get a bunch of travel newsletters via email, and one that shows up every now and then is called Escape From America. I haven’t unsubscribed, but I haven’t read an issue lately either. It goes unopened because for a while now I’ve been getting an unexplained bad vibe from the title.
Like plenty of other Americans, sometimes I feel a vague, uneasy desire to escape. Only this summer did I realize that it’s easy to confuse that feeling with a desire to escape from America.
Back in May, a few surprisingly trivial things made me feel trapped, and the confused response was pursuit of a ticket to teach for a year in Asia. I feel lucky to have stopped the saboteurs in time. There’s a fine line between travel to get closer to something–adventure, freedom, authenticity–and travel to run away.
I say saboteurs because, upon further reflection, it became clear that the adventure du jour is right here, in unsuspecting ol’ Bethlehem, PA. I’m wrapped up in a few storylines, and am both working and waiting to see how they play out.
Yes, it’s embarrassing that I asked a friend for advice on making Korea happen, and later saw her Facebook status of, “People should follow through on their plans.” Entirely coincidental, but still…
Yes, I feel stupid when I end up explaining (yet again), Well, looks like I’m gonna be around here a little longer after all…
But what I’m not worried or ashamed about are the reasons why I’m excited to stick with my American life:
Because I’m learning through doing. Because despite having no formal timeline or contract, leaving now would mean abandoning projects I’ve invested serious effort in. Projects much bigger than the annoyances I almost fled from.
Because I’ve accepted that going abroad isn’t automatically preferable to being at home (if you need further convincing, ask an anti-war vet).
Because staying here strengthens my ability to sustain commitment. Because (and this last one can devour a lifetime if you’re not careful) if I stay here and finish what I’ve started, my travel choices in the not-too-distant future will be wide open.
Exploring this town and keeping an eye on my developing options makes the anticipation of purposeful, educational travel with hand-picked goals, well, delicious. (The inevitable comparison is learning not to throw away a Polaroid picture after five seconds of nothing.)
Please, don’t get me wrong. It’s great to be drunk on a travel plan. Just make sure you know why you picked up the bottle.
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P.S. Tack a “for now…” on the end of this post’s title…
Travel and storms are both the changing of a place. You sense a distant rumbling that something’s brewing. An oncoming pressure drop. When the wind gets in your hair, you know it’s on.
It hits and jars your senses. There’s adrenaline, fear, and giddyness in some proportion, cut with the awe of something immediate and massive. You’ll have to act spontaneously, improvise, or deal.
The situation could be a catalyst for memorable sex. On the other hand, you might be thrown into an emergency, a tragedy, or both.
Provided you make it out alive, you’ll have been through something impossible to replicate.
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From ski trips, to the beach, to (of course) storm chasing, so much travel is in search of weather. But, after last week’s crazy storms, I’m thinking it’s just as easy for adventure to appear when the weather comes to us.
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There is a photo by Dale Kaminski, aka NebraskaSC via Flickr, taken on June 4, 2008 on Highway 40 near Riverdale, Nebraska. His quoted description below is a travel story as much as a weather story, complete with chase and map enthusiasm…
Just out doing my duty to the NOAA… Weather Spotting….
A chase up north about 10 1/2 miles from Kearney, Nebraska. Close and near Riverdale Nebraska, we had some serious development of an Incredible Shelf Cloud and a Wall Cloud just to the south and north of this area…
Images have been GeoTracked, so you can look on the map to see for yourself!
This was the 1st Monster that was captured that day. This storm was moving North Northwest about 55mph and it had some Incredible Rotation.
I did call the weather service and reported the rotation, but it never did drop a funnel…
Do you imagine the worst when you fly? You don’t necessarily have to dwell on it–an unexpected what if or a quick flashback to the disaster movie of your choice both count.
Maybe you get the jitters while waiting at the gate. Maybe you slap the side of the craft as you step through the cabin door, making sure it’s sturdy. Maybe the butterflies swirl when you buckle your seatbelt.
It’s not a newbie thing, either. Ross Garnaut admits to wracked nerves even after 3,000+ flights. I don’t think anyone’s immune to at least a second of creeping irrationality.
You can find a classic what if? passage from Don DeLillo’s White Noise.
At the airport we waited in a mist of plaster dust, among exposed wires, mounds of rubble. Half an hour before Bee was due to arrive, the passengers from another flight began filing through a drafty tunnel into the arrivals area. They were gray and stricken, they were stooped over in weariness and shock, dragging their hand luggage across the floor. Twenty, thirty, forty people came out, without a word or look, keeping their eyes to the ground. Some limped, some wept. More came through the tunnel, adults with whimpering children, old people trembling, a black minister with his collar askew, one shoe missing. Tweedy helped a woman with two small kids. I approached a young man, a stocky fellow with a mailman’s cap and beer belly, wearing a down vest, and he looked at me as if I didn’t belong in his space-time dimension but had crossed over illegally, made a rude incursion. I forced him to stop and face me, asked him what had happened up there. As people kept filing past, he exhaled wearily. Then he nodded, his eyes steady on mine, full of a gentle resignation.
The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet. Something like four miles.
A small room forces you out of the room. It cuts down the number of anchors you can keep. A bed, two chairs, and a desk. Clothes in a duffel on the floor. Forget A/C, put a fan in the window and bring in the world.
A small room amplifies the assertions of what you put on the walls. If you’ve hung maps, you’re that much closer. And you can only fit so big a mirror (which some would argue is healthy).
A small room demands you prioritize–which books do I need right now? One string of Christmas lights can do wonders. In a small room, it’s easy to figure out where to put what you pray to. In other words, a point of focus is easy to find.
The Hotel Bethlehem used to be the go-to spot for all facets of tycoons hoping to cut deals with Bethlehem Steel.
Today, it still has the white-gloved doormen, martini bar, and twenty-foot-high red neon sign on the roof begging for a superhero fight scene.
And it still has that ambiance of no questions asked, unless you look like you don’t belong here. To be welcome, all you have to do is look like you belong.
Now like any top hotel, the clientele is unpredictable. Anyone could be a steel heir, or just dumb enough to go into debt for a few nights’ stay. To be warmly received at the Hotel Bethlehem (or your establishment of choice), clothes are a negligible 5% of the charade.
It’s all about walking in the front door and breezing past the desk like you’re finally home.
And that’s what’s best about the free stays here–having to force yourself into believing that you’re on the road, staying in the penthouse, and sorry, can’t talk now, I’m mini-bar bound. So what that your visit will just be a quick trip to the lobby bathroom (hidden on the second floor next to the restaurant). It’s a journey.
Plus, drying your hands on fluffy Ralph Lauren towels adds nicely to the illusion. Try it and let me know what you think.
Have you ever had a bad bout of homesickness? I’m talking severe–where you start missing traffic, and junk mail, and having plaque scraped off your teeth at the dentist? How did it hit, and how did you deal with it?
It suffocated me as a feeling of having slighted my family and friends. As a sudden conviction that they believed my travels to be in spite of them, and that they felt inferior to my wooden bed in nowhere, Nepal. I had a feeling of the action movie digital bomb clock countdown, that someone close to me will invariably die while I’m abroad, and everyone else will point fingers and say this just proves you don’t care.
And worst of all, you can’t say that you really didn’t mean to leave them behind. Nobody’s buying that one.
That’s just the first part of homesickness. The adult version of the childhood Big Trouble in the Principal’s Office and By The Way, We’re Telling Your Parents feeling.
The second part is wanting to make it up to them. Them–your family, your friends, everyone. Everyone who you now realize still loves you, everyone you’re realizing how much you love. This part likes to creep up on you when you’re far from a phone. But it’ll also push you away from calling because you can’t put it into words. It’s a tight-in-the-chest thing. You’d probably explode.
How does it disappear? Maybe you can call a truce with a postcard, or maybe it just subsides on its own. Can’t really remember. Most likely a couple of surprise laughs.
