A Eulogy for Travel Dreams

Climbing back from a hidden beach - my brother.

Last year we decided to go to Iceland in 2020. We take a few trips a year, but international trips are every couple of years. When we went to France, we bought our tickets almost an entire year in advance. It allowed us to save the rest of the money we needed before the trip came around. Luckily, though, this year we hadn’t yet bought tickets when COVID-19 hit.

There have been many horror stories about people losing all of their reservation money from airlines and hotels. Having to fight to get even credit back from these big companies.

But the space from this trip to Iceland still lingers. Recently, we watched Zach Efron’s Down to Earth series on Netflix, which debuted with an episode about Iceland. The black sand. The great ocean surrounding. The mineral pools and waterfalls and winding roads and Reykjavik. In Down to Earth they visit a cliffside; a giant river. Cascading, roaring falls from a crack in the great earth; grey skies. Gullfoss Falls. One of the most popular tourist spots in Iceland. Over a million people a year.

More than this, though, the space holds the part of me that wants to leave the country. I was talking with a coworker recently about the vacation time I was taking - one whole week off, a Staycation. She said she had a trip booked with her sister, who doesn’t live in town - To Nashville, to see music - but it was cancelled a few months ago. They held out for a while, believing the summer would turn around and that they wouldn’t be locked down. But that didn’t happen.

“Next year,” she said, still hopeful the pandemic would be gone by then.

I told her about Iceland, and about how another coworker used to live in Norway. She said she was scared to leave the country.

“I’d like to see the ruins in Peru,” she said. “But I’d have to go with a lot of people.”

My coworker said it wasn’t safe to travel alone, which made me feel bad for the way Americans see the rest of the world. To Nashville, to The Grand Canyon, to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but not to Argentina or Chile. Not to Peru with her husband. She heard you have to travel in a very large group. Like twenty people. It’s no surprise, of course, she felt that way. Especially during the Trump Presidency, but it was sad.

When we travelled to France, it was the first time I had left North America. The flight was long and the coffee was bad (always I will remember the coffee). But in the small towns, in the old castles and at the top of dormant volcanoes, grassed over for many years, barely cold, was an experience I couldn’t have had the same way if we stayed in the US because for me it was somewhere else. It felt different. People lived differently. I didn’t understand. It was isolating a lot of the time because I didn’t speak French. I saw people talking, familiar. Missing each other. I didn’t understand, but I could see.

You can have this experience traveling in your own country too. 

In a cabin-hostel at Glacier National Park, we cooked dinner quickly to avoid talking to anyone. There were black bears in the forest. PCT Hikers were passing through. Stopping for the night. Coyotes in the dusk, surrounded by brilliant snowy mountains. On the first floor was a general store that had vegan ice cream. The showers were gendered.

In The Painted Hills, we stayed at a bicycle hostel that used to be a church. The couple who ran it were getting ready for a big race that went all the way down the west coast. Big pots of pasta and quick-to-eat meals were prepared for the last day we were there. I played them The Blood of Others on Spotify. They said they liked it. The shower was in a small covered area outside of the church, a few feet away. There was water pressure, but also spiders.

Last February, we went to Hawaii on a family trip. There was a long ridge covered in spindly trees, the top of a mountain that ran through the middle of the island. It took an hour to get there. My brother went out ahead of us (he was more brave), and took pictures on the part of the trail that was too narrow for my comfort. We made dinner in a million dollar house. I read Isadora by Amelia Gray on the beach while everyone else went in the ocean. The co-op had vegan Musubi.

Last month, we went to Mount Hood and spent four hours trying to find a place to hike without a permit. I gave up and went to Timberline Lodge, so we could at least see some snow. It was ninety degrees and there were hundreds of people in the parking lot. We didn’t stop. Eventually, with no help from me, we found a spot to hike. Up into the trees and away from any sound of the road. The forest became another kind of forest - clover-covered and dense, up we went. When we decided to turn around, we’d only gone 0.7 miles. It was steep, but the day made me tired and grumpy. We were home before five o’clock.

At the end of my staycation, now, I feel the missing space of travel even more than I did before. I read books. I studied. I watched movies and made dinner. We walked around our neighborhood every night. The rest was nice, but the space grew deeper. When will we be able to leave again?

Reading Werner Herzog’s Of Walking In Ice didn’t help.

Watching Fran Meneses’ travel vlogs to Berlin and Tokyo and Mexico didn’t help.

But I recommend them to you. 

It’s hard now to see a world in which we can travel as freely, at least within the next couple of years. As Americans, I feel, it’s irresponsible to go to a country like Iceland or Finland, who have taken the proper steps - who have believed the science and helped their people - to control the pandemic, but I still want to. I still mourn the loss - over dramatic as it may be - of traveling.