Three recent short trips have stimulated thinking about the experience of traveling.
Traveling is one of many life experiences. For most people, the everyday experiences of life are relatively repetitive and include the basic functions of maintaining a living space, traveling to and from some sort of work, and performing that work. These tasks repeat, and the experience is often repetitive. Some work tasks involve travel, most dramatically airline pilots and attendants, and these become repetitive in order to be performed safely and with precision. So the point of travel for most people is the opportunity to have an experience different from everyday life. Travel can take many forms including 1)tourism, 2) adventure travel, 3) exploration, and 4) personal development. These may be combined in the same event, and be different for different person's engaged in the same event.
Tourism is travel in which the individual experiences a new environment that is designed, in some way, to attract and cater to travelers. This includes comfortable accommodations that coincide with the affluence of the tourist, experiences designed to display unique features of the location to the tourist, including local foods, and an arranged itinerary that ensures the tourist will not get lost or have undesirable experiences. This may be arranged by a tour guide or other person, or be successfully arranged by the tourist himself. The key to understanding tourism is the opportunity to experience a new location or culture, without having to experience significant discomfort or conflict with one's own culture.
Adventure travel overlaps with tourism and has subtle differences. An activity, an "adventure", is defined which the traveler will experience and or perform, which will challenge the traveler in some significant way. The experience is created for the use of travelers, and ranges widely. It may involve physical challenges like scuba diving, skiing, hiking, horseback riding, bicycling, etc. It may involve a physical endurance like walking across a specified region. In adventure travel a specified activity is required of the traveler and the experience that results is partly dependent on how the traveler carries out the task. For liability and other reasons, adventure travels are always activities that are very likely to be safely performed by travelers, but are sometimes presented as if they are dangerous in some exciting way. The traveler's experience with the activity will affect this, and very inexperienced travelers will, in fact, experience some danger. Adventure travel is designed and organized like tourism experience but is often designed to create a specific challenge for the traveler.
Exploration is the travel experience in which neither the guide or the traveler can predict the experience that occurs. This is sometimes seen in adventure travel when a hunting trip, a river passage, or some other journey includes encountering natural events or animals which are unpredictable. It may also involve travel to places that are unfamiliar without the protective cover of tourism, including dangerous locations, or without careful planning. Exploration adds both additional excitement to adventure travel, and some potential risk, which may contribute to personal exploration, the last feature of travel.
Personal development is not an intrinsic feature of travel though it is often credited with being so. "Traveling is broadening" implies that going out of one's comfort zone automatically provides learning experiences in a new environment. But this is only true when the person is open to new experiences, and the design of the events does not prescribe the experiences. Personal development is likely to be more present in adventure or in exploration, but this depends on the individual. Personal development can also occur in very simple events that do not have dramatic features or depart from everyday life. If personal development occurs, it is both the type of experience the travel provides, and the person's openness to change. This can vary widely. On a recent trip I visited the Steinbeck museum and was stimulated to read TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY.
Travels was written as a journey to "learn about America" again. It is a memoir in the first person, explicitly meant to be a "hero's journey", and begins with an heroic episode in which he saves his favorite boat during a hurricane in Sag Harbor, Long Island. Steinbeck fitted out a special camper truck for the journey and brought along his dog Charley, a French poodle, hence the title. The trip lasted three months or so, beginning in the Fall (September?) and ended somewhere around the new year. Although the path circumscribes the US, the trip included only certain spots.
Steinbeck had recently had a heart episode, felt his energies failing, and tells the reader that the journey is meant to show that he was still vital and able to take on the challenge; the book provides evidence that this is not true, that he is not physically or mentally up to the journey, and is a warning to older men that this is probably not a good idea. Though he intended to encounter "Americans" along the way to find out about where the country was going, there are few actual encounters, and at least half of the book are musings (rants) about changes he does not like, which could have been written from his room in Sag Harbor.
He is at his best describing the countryside, as in New England in the Fall with the color changes, which includes his sit down with a family of French Canadians who are picking potatoes in Maine, and enabled by cognac. The warm fuzzy feeling he reports is more likely the cognac than the people, with whom he struggled to communicate!
He dislikes people who are stuck in
maps, and avoids using them (long before GPS) and he
frequently acknowledges getting lost. He drives
past Minneapolis-St Paul, completely missing the cities, he intended to
visit! He gets lost many other times, including his arrival back
home on Long Island. His carefree "follow my spirit" attitude is
offset by his anxiety about not knowing where he is going. He
dislikes the new highways that isolate drivers from the natural world,
but uses them frequently in his hurry to make destinations. In
short, he is humorously inconsistent about how he manages the journey, is not used to traveling on his own,
and is unfamiliar with how travel has changed. A dialog with long haul truckers enlightens him.
He falls in love with Montana, but it is difficult to understand what appeals to him. Here his writing is not eloquent, and the magic is not transferred to the reader. By contrast, his spiritual feeling about redwoods is eloquently expressed, including a humorous incident with Charley. Indeed, the entire episode in the Monterey Bay/Salinas area of his youth is poignant, and expresses the reality that "you can't go home again".
Southern CA is completely ignored in his beeline to Texas for a Thanksgiving "orgy". His wife was from Texas, and meets him at the ranch of some wealthy Texans. He notes the wealth of the ranch owners and friends, and goes hunting without shooting anything, drinks and eats a lot, but no other "orgy" behaviors are reported for anyone. Common stereotypes and misconceptions about Texas are repeated, but the Texas that was emerging in the 60s is not described, and there is no sense that he engaged with the state despite his wife's background.
In the last major section, he goes to New Orleans to observe a crowd heckling a Negro girl who is attending a previously all White school by court order. He documents the hatred, exaggerated cursing, and general attempt at public display, along with moderating comments by several locals. It is a limited journalistic account, very intense, and totally different from the rest of the book.
Steinbeck failed to accomplish his stated mission: to travel back roads in a camper. He used freeways at times, and slept in motels at least some of the time. He met few locals to learn about the country: a total of about eight encounters, mostly casual, some political, but often injected his own view, and many regions are ignored including much of the South, Florida, much of California, New Mexico, etc. He struggled to get an "overview" of Americans, and claimed that there is something "American" in common with all he met, but could not articulate it.
Travels with Charley was intended to be an exploration and a chance for personal development. gives
clear messages: An intelligent, talented older man he was unhappy about the changes he saw happening in the world, and did not show much personal development. An older traveler alone, he had difficulty managing the journey and frequent "adventures" in getting lost, etc. All these "accomplishments", unintended by
the author, are clearly documented by his honesty, reporting his
weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It provides a useful warning to older individuals planning to save the world, or rediscover it. "You can't go home again." And the world changes and you must accept it, or be unhappy that it has.
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