Some thoughts on travel by a person who deeply loves his homeplace
Over the past few weeks, I traveled to Switzerland (with a quick dip in France) with my wife Stef to visit some friends that live out there and soak up the wildly vertical country. This is the first time I've been out of the country since I was a teenager. We explored the Zürich and Neuchâtel, hiked a beautiful section of the alps near Kandersteg, and visited several small Absinthe distilleries in Val-de-Travers.
While travel is not my usual subject of exploration, I wanted to share some insights that bubbled up over the course of the trip, which have a lot to do with what I do usually love to explore in my posts: presence, embodiment, sense of place, and the like. I hope these reflections resonate regardless!
Six crumbs of insight on travel:
- Traveling across the earth via plane doesn't actually feel like traveling. It feels more like teleportation that requires an extended wait in varied holding area.
I left my apartment with bags of stuff, walked a bit, went down a set of stairs into the earth, emerged from the earth again into a bustling, bureaucratic, and shiny glass dome, into a metallic tube with wings and chairs with windows looking out into an ethereal void we were apparently floating in, went to sleep, woke up and followed a line of people through a zig-zaggy tunnel into another shiny glass dome (in another country, Ireland, apparently) for more waiting to then be herded into another metallic tube with wings, back into the ethereal void of the heavens, into a final shiny glass dome, onto a conveyer belt back into the earth, into a final tube which moved silently on tracks, hurtling through a subterranean void, stopping at an opening, where I finally emerged again from the earth into a place called Zürich (apparently 4, 425 miles away from the place where I originally descended into the earth).
Did I really go anywhere?
- There is a beautiful ‘sameness’ underlying the beautiful differences between the place I call home and the place I traveled to.
Plants are recognizable, albeit different species from similar genera or families that we find here in the states – ecological patterns repeat themselves in wildly different places, giving me a sense of familiarity – the verticality of the Alps in Switzerland is echoed by the verticality of the skyscrapers in Chicago.
- Be a good guest
Learn more of the language than you think you should. It felt like I had so many limbs missing not being able to communicate and shoot the shit with the people I encountered. I will never forget the arrogance of not learning the language(s) more and definitely look forward to preparing more in this way next time.
- The thought: “Oh, it would be nice to live here," followed by the realization: “Oh, wait, I do live here… just a couple thousand miles over there.”
- It's easy to romanticize people in other countries just living their lives, despite everything we don't see about the person.
At the same time, it's totally possible that someone out there is romanticizing my life while I'm over here romanticizing someone else's life.
In Môtiers, I was admiring a woman who distilled absinthe for a living, with a garden surrounding her home distillery, nestled in the foothills of the alps filled with aromatic plants to distill into the absinthe.
My thought: “She is really living the dream."
My thought later: “Wait a minute, so am I!”
Seeing people live their life, fully immersed in their environment, with all the beauty, struggle, joy, loneliness, and connection that go with that, gives me the freedom to fully be in my own life and enjoy everything that goes with it.
I am so grateful to be healthy and alive, in the beautiful Chicago region, surrounded by literal great lakes, and prairies, and oak savannas. Sure it may be hard and mundane sometime. But the magic I see in others' lives is also present here in mine, as long as I'm willing to let go of the illusion that magic only exists somewhere other than right in front of me.
- Final Insight (and perhaps the most imporant): arriving excessively early to the airport is definitely the move.
You might think, “Oh, but the airport sucks, why would I want to spend any more time there than I should?”
Honestly, the airport probably sucks for most people because they are running late, or are choosing to avoid where they are at. The airport is ripe for people watching and just wandering around a new place. I had one of the best times on my trip before I even left O'Hare airport, listening to groovy tunes and weaving my little rolley suitcase through the bustling crowds like a slalom skier through the pines. If you'd like, here is a Spotify playlist for this very purpose.
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.
– Rumi
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