Learning to Love Traveling

My sons and their grown children all love to travel. So does almost everyone else I know: all over the world, at all times, with no restrictions that for others would be imposed by work or money.

I only made one trip “overseas” at twelve, and a regular August visit to New England, so I never really became comfortable with traveling. My family is internationalist; I’m localist, firmly rooted in New Mexico after thirty-three years here and still finding places in the state to explore. And I work, regularly and intensely as a writer; my next book, a collection of short stories, hilarious and outrageous, called Cowboy Tales will be published by Turtle Point Press next fall. I’ve never been able to create a space for writing in a hotel room and so those stays inevitably feel barren.

When I have to travel, back to Kentucky or to the East Coast or, very rarely, out of the country, I’m uncomfortable, discombobulated, homesick. But since I do have to travel about four times a year, I want to teach myself how to do it with less discomfort.

Well, here goes: I take Amtrak to the East Coast and to the West Coast, which gives me days of comfort, relaxation and reflection. Really these trips entail only one small challenge: accepting that Amtrak, due to its stepchild position in our train system, is nearly always late. Not a big issue for me since waiting is also a time to read and watch my fellow passengers.

But there are places I need to go, especially Louisville, Kentucky, that are not at this point served by Amtrak. This means flying. And I dread flying, not because I’m afraid of hurtling through the air, but because I hate to put those fumes into the atmosphere (maybe one day we’ll know how damaging they are—although of course they don’t compare to the atmospheric destruction wrought by our wars) and because the impersonality of air travel makes me feel invisible.

At worst, scorned when something goes wrong, at best simply invisible. This is increasing as the check-in process grows more and more automated. I think the airlines will finally succeed in doing away with all human interactions.

But I’m determined to make progress rather than to accept my discomfort. First of all, for a writer, being invisible is an advantage. I can stare at strangers for as long as I need to because no one, except for children, looks back. So in Dallas on my way to Louisville, I was able to stare, painfully, at a mother with two children, one small, the other an eleven-year-old boy, and to observe, again painfully, how every line of his body and every word he spoke (there were few) reeked with scorn.

Perhaps it was scorn for his patient and forbearing mother—I think that was it—or perhaps it was scorn for the world around him. This reminded me of how the patriarchy has, for decades, dug its claws into young males. As grown men, they often rule this country.

The responsive faces of children are another blessing. Until some adult stops them, they will look, stare and even smile. Not yer benumbed, not yet turned off. They are my models.

I’ve also found that calling everyone official who wears a name tag by their name—first if that’s all that’s listed, Mr. or Mrs. (or MS!) so-in-so if that’s available—usually cracks their professional aloofness. After all, we are all humans together, suffering in ugly, crowded, airless, inhumane spaces. And they are there for long shifts; I’m only passing through.

When things go wrong, flights canceled inexplicably for example—which will happen this overloaded Thanksgiving season and again at Christmas—asking sincerely of some numb-looking professional, “Can you help me?” sometimes produces a smile and a ready answer. Treating a stranger as a human being does have its rewards.

And finally, I’m finding that the infinite variety of these big airports can be intriguing: all the gift shops, candy shops, travel shops, magazine shops (no newspapers though) and the often third-world women who work the counters. So many kinds of headrests—is that what they’re called?—to prevent our heads from lolling when we fall asleep.

And I sleep as often as I can. I always bring a book I really want to read—right now, it’s Big Red—and pick up magazines that are current compared to the copies I get by mail at home. Once in a long while, I find an actual newspaper.

As soon as I arrive, I take a walk. Mary Oliver often writes of the essentialness of being outside:

From “At Blackwater Pond” after drinking water from the pond:

It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
Oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?”

And, did I mention, a sense of humor!

In Travel Amtrak Mary Oliver