Thoughts on Travel

We've just come back to Montreal from an intense, eye-opening, two-week trip to Sicily. I'll be writing more about our experiences over the next couple of weeks, but first I wanted to say a few things about travel in general, because I've been thinking about that a lot during this trip.

I feel extremely fortunate to be able to travel. It was always a goal for J. and me, but with a few exceptions, we put it off: as self-employed people it was hard for us to get away for extended periods of time, and travel requiring airfare has always been expensive. We lived frugally for many years in order to be able to put money aside for later in life, and I'm grateful that we're still in good enough shape to be able to enjoy the kind of adventuresome travel we like to do. Nevertheless, I know I'm lucky, and that there are lots of reasons why many people never get to go far away, or choose not to.

Unlike my husband, who had traveled in Europe and the Middle East when he was young, I grew up in a family and among people who didn't travel much at all, and though I longed to go to faraway places, I was afraid. Not of flying, which I've always found exciting, but like my mother and other family members I had fears of getting sick or lost or being unable to sleep, and there was no one to give me the confidence to prepare well, then just go, see it as an adventure, and deal with whatever happens. You have to learn to travel, and it wasn't until I met J. that I had someone to trust and confide in who helped me overcome those fears. I loved big cities, but was nervous about them, especially getting round on my own, but eventually I got over that, too. I can still remember the thrill of accomplishment the first time I went off on my own in London, and found my way without trouble: it's given me a lifelong affection for that city. People who meet me now may see me as worldly, urban, confident and sophisticated, but there was a time when I certainly wasn't any of those things, and I have a lot of empathy for people who find travel daunting. Those fears still live inside me, and once in a while they still surface.

Travel, for me, is a privilege and a responsibility. If I'm lucky enough to go somewhere, I try to learn as much as I can, and to absorb that experience deeply so that I can share it in some way, do something with it that isn't just for myself. Some people travel inside their own bubble, like the loud, inconsiderate, demading tourists we all sometimes encounter. Some people seem like they aren't really seeing anything, just capturing each sight -- or themselves in front of it -- on their phone or iPad so they can show their friends they were there. I guess I see travel more as extra-ordinary time: an opportunity to leave normal comforts and routines aside, be vulnerable to experience, to suspend judgement, and to be open to the potential for internal change. I love the feeling of heightened sensory awareness, of having to figure complex things out and make quick decisions, of trying to communicate in unfamiliar languages and make connections simply as one human being to another. I like projecting myself less, and listening and seeing more.

J. and I have chosen not to stay in fancy hotels or eat out a lot. Because we are sometimes in locations where there is poverty, we keep a low profile, dress down, and try to blend in, even though it's obvious we aren't locals. Usually we stay in apartments or small b&bs where we can cook meals from food bought in local markets and do our own laundry; we try to bike or walk as much as we can, and to take care of ourselves rather than expecting to be served. I'm concerned about the carbon cost of air travel, but also realize that the money we spend in local economies like Mexico is helpful for the people there. I don't feel guilty about traveling, but I think we need to be aware of what we're doing and the impact it has.

I also realize that we are seen as immensely privileged by many of the people we meet: I am able to come into their place and go away again; I have money and freedom and opportunities that many people, both here and there, will never have. Being sensitive to these emotional complications is a significant part of travel for me, and I hope it informs what I write and what I draw or photograph -- or choose not to.

The more places I go, and the more our world becomes divided between haves and have-nots, the more I find myself thinking about these issues. Sicily is surrounded by the Mediterranean; its proximity to Africa and the Middle East has affected its entire history as well as the present. Refugees are not a theoretical concept to be debated, but an everyday reality. Mexico City has been hit by devastating earthquakes; its people live with corrupt government, injustice, grinding poverty, and constant violence.

I've been deeply affected and changed by what I've seen, not just as a witness to the present but to the layers of human history that travel reveals. I'm never sure what to do with it, but I don't want to merely collect beauty and ignore the awfulness. I need to find ways to hold and express both, because our world is, and has always been, made of both darkness and light.

Comments

[Rachel Barenblat]

This is a beautiful post. Thank you for this.

[Marly Youmans]

I've traveled more in recent years and am fascinated with the surprises embedded in travel--elements (good or ill) never considered before. Strange to think that, living only a few hundred years ago, most of us might never have gone more than a few miles from home. A departure or an arrival would have been wondrous.

[Peter]

That's very well put! My father's father came from Siculiana, up the south coast of Sicily from Agrigento. I doubt you got down that way, but I am looking forward to whatever you plan to share about this trip!

[Beth]

Thank you, Rachel.

So true, Marly. I think air travel is still too fast for our bodies and minds.

Peter, actually we must have driven through Siculiana on our way from Selinunte to Agrigento, but it was dark. Still, I'll have plenty to say about the southern coast. I didn't know your grandfather was from there! That makes me even more interested.

[Sharyn]

I look forward to your posts on Sicily too! I feel fortunate that I've lived in three other countries, Canada, Ireland and Sweden. Ireland before the Celtic Tiger. And I've traveled in Europe and the US. These days I'm happy to be home in NH.
I saw a documentary on airports a while ago which stated that air travel will double in the future. I find that hard to believe. I find travel stressful but have many experiences I treasure, mostly the people I have met.

[Frances/Materfamilias]

So much I relate to here, as I get ready to travel next week. We, too, prefer to stay in more modest accommodation, more integrated, if possible, into the everyday life of the place we're visiting. I do love to visit galleries and museums, but otherwise I'm less drawn to see particular iconic sights than I am just to observe the everyday. So far, for example, despite having visited Rome five times, I have not felt a need to line up and go inside the Vatican, although I do realize there are works inside I would enjoy seeing, nor have I taken a tour of the Colosseum. But I've run in the Borghese Gardens in the early morning, and I've walked kilometres and kilometres, getting lost and found and stopping for coffee and chatted in mangled Italian with the old couple enjoying Carciofi alla giudia in an unprepossessing restaurant on an obscure piazza. . . .
And trains are still my preference, but I'm so grateful for the privilege of flying (although not without some eco-guilt mixed in to the gratitude)

[Loretta Marvel]

My niece is working as a missionary in Sicily with the refugees just outside Catania. The stories of the people she assist are overwhelming as to the harrowing journeys and their needs. Have you seen the documentary Fire and Ice? It is about the small island of Lampedusa, through whose port most of the refugees are brought into Italy. The refugees reside in a camp near a U.S. military base. They are free to come and go but that is where they receive shelter, food, etc. I stayed in Catania for a few days by myself. I picked a small, family run hotel in a working class part of the city. I walked everywhere and ate at the neighborhood bars. The back streets of Catania are full of brooding young male refugees standing in doorways, staring out at the passersby, with the same expressions that I remember from the poverty stricken in the backroads of the South. They are the secret hidden from the throngs at the temples and the Europeans threading through the winding streets of Taormina. But is that not always the way in developed countries? The people speak of the great needs of the refugees and how they must be helped - but not by Sicily of course, a country too poor to tend to its own. Sicily is a country like no other. Its hot winds and lava walls and alleyways filled with candles and families eating pasta at midnight at street side tables, it's vineyards and interior farms clinging to rock, and towns where no one even spoke Italian but a dialect so thick that we could only pantomine to communicate, all has gotten under my skin like an ancestral burr. I am ever-longing to go back.

[Natalie]

Beth, as always you go beyond the personal (without letting go of it) and imbue your travel experiences with a fresh sense of discovery and respect for history as well as acute observations of the place where you find yourself. I'll keep on repeating what I've said so often before: write a travel book, YOUR travels, the places where you (former non-traveller) have been and how they appear in your eyes, with your words, your images.

[Mary Jane Fandrich]

Hi Beth,

Your insights into the effects of travel on your own perception and understanding are very gratifying. These have been the privilege of those of us born to or learning the wonder of travel.
Early in life as a seven year old in Egypt, it was my wish that we could take home all the miserable children on the streets so that they might be like me. Those children are still there, only several generations later, now on the streets of Beirut. The reasons are endemic in the human condition, for which the ultimate solution is known to us. He has come to us, and put on our clothes, and stood on our streets. And above all, paid the penalty for our sin. We are free to expend ourselves on behalf of all those He gives us to care for
beginning at home.