A lot us are ready to hit the road about now: According to dependable surveys, about 82 percent of Americans will travel this summer. In fact, the Independence Day holiday just past is always the busiest time of the year for travel.
The love affair between 20th-century Americans and their automobiles is credited with creating the idea of the road trip – that venture into parts unknown just for the joy of it. My dad, who was born at the end of the First World War, was one of those people. So in vacation season, our family would pack up for a couple of weeks and head out of town with a travel trailer in tow. It’s how I learned to travel, and why I’ve visited 49 states and five continents.
That wanderlust is especially American because this has historically been a nation of optimists – and psychologists tell us that people who like to travel tend to be optimists: It takes some confidence that things will turn out all right to make a decision to leave home for anything more than a couple of days.
For those optimistic travelers, there are countless rewards for venturing beyond the neighborhood. I’ve witnessed Indian men walking on hot coals and Native Americans performing the “sun dance,” long banned by the U.S. government as “heathenish.” I’ve swum with sea lions and sharks, surprised a herd of giraffes and zebras on the veldt, and waited at a respectful distance as a moose mama and her calf took their time poking about my campsite, and as hungry brown bears feasted on salmon at a nearby waterfall.
You may have a list of your own travel memories, or a bucket list of such adventures in mind. But travel isn’t just about getting from one place to another, or seeing beautiful sights. We travel for the experience of it, for the way it grows our understanding and expands our imagination.
In fact, our impulse to travel seems to be one of the traits that defines humans. Other creatures move about with intent, such as a search for food or a spot to build a safe nest for offspring. Humans do that — we emigrate for physical security or religious freedom, for example — but we also travel for reasons that seem less practical and more philosophical. Evolutionary anthropologists note that no other mammal moves around like we do. And if we can’t say why, we know the benefits that accrue from travel.
It can inspire us to empathy, because we see people whose experiences are so different from our own.
It teaches us both flexibility and humility, since it’s a rare itinerary that isn’t disrupted by factors we can’t control, like weather and even political unrest.
It gives us a greater appreciation for the value of savoring the moment at hand, whether it’s the parting of a veil of fog to reveal a treetop drenched in morning sun, or a school of porpoises leaping in what seems surely to have been choreographed to awe impressionable humans.
To travel is to invite an opening of our minds. Though it’s possible to miss the opportunity. You don’t need a TV set at your campsite, you know; your favorite shows can wait. And then there’s foreign food. When I traveled with a musical group in Eastern Europe during two summers in my youth — “behind the Iron Curtain,” as we said in those days — some of my friends couldn’t wait to get to a western-style hotel so they could order a hamburger. Too bad they missed the cabbage rolls and polenta the locals were eating.
Meanwhile, a certain homogeneity has overtaken this country: Your Taco Bell chalupa a thousand miles away tastes just like the one you get at your nearby Taco Bell. So why bother? On a road trip a couple of years back, my daughter and I had Kansas City barbecue for lunch one day in that city and Texas barbecue for dinner the next day in Austin. We happily compared them and declared our favorites.
Certainly, there are moral arguments against the excesses of modern travel. Tourism is responsible for deforestation, wildlife destruction, water pollution. The UN estimates that tourism accounts for about 8 percent of the world’s human-produced carbon emissions: The environmental impact of one person’s share of a single round-trip trans-Atlantic flight almost wipes out any gain that would come from living car-free for a year. And crowds of tourists are over-running favorite destinations, from America’s national parks to such bucket-list places as Venice and Machu Picchu.
The solution to such challenges is not to convince people to stay home; it is to convince governments to make thoughtful choices that can mitigate some of the environmental harm of over-population. Our travel bucket list will be more interesting, anyway, if we value and celebrate experiences lived on the road, rather than turning travel into a competition to put notches on our tourist belt for most famous places visited.
Thoughtful travel isn’t just getting from one place to another or achieving a visit to someplace famous. It’s part of the rich experience of living – a way that we can reconnect with our dreams and with others. For when we slip the bonds of our isolation, we give ourselves room to grow.
And that applies whatever age we are. Dr. Seuss wrote, “Oh, the places you’ll go!” Was he writing for children, or for all of us? Doesn’t matter, if we let our imagination lead us. Let’s go!
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.