Fellowship of Travel

One of the things I appreciate about travel is the commonality of the travelers. Of whatever background, age, education, or income, we are all, at least for awhile, of the same kind. We are uprooted drifters, en route, in the same boat, so to speak, or bus, or train.

We form a fellowship of the displaced. A great joy of going is not only in seeing what I have never seen before, but experiencing it with others, and finding their stories along the way. The professor of German from the university of Chicago, the Indiana Mennonite showing his son the country, the classical violinist, the Oklahoman, the runaway, the drunk. I prefer their stories to my own. I know mine. Theirs are novel, unknown but knowable, and no matter where I may be or what I am up to, another's adventures are always the more fascinating.

 I imagine that a large part of this has to do with my chosen modes of travel. So much as I can, I like to keep as little separation between my feet and the earth as possible. I like to see the land i'm passing over, to make out the leaves on the trees and how the grass bends with the wind and how the people i pass squint their eyes in the sun. I remain skeptical of the reliance of air travel. To sail the skies in a fire retardant aluminum envelope still sounds to me like the work of fiction, though it is now more than a century since Kitty Hawk. I've taken flights, I know their economy and efficiency, but still, 35,000 feet is many more than I am comfortable with and I have rarely had a worthwhile conversation on a plane. 


Trains, buses, boats, and bicycles have always lent themselves - within my lifetime at least - to a slower-paced crowd, one that does not mind delay. Here one is more likely to find people like myself, wanderers following a planktonic existence, going where currents allow. These are the people with whom i may find support for my decisions, or at least commiseration for the many drawbacks. They help me see my decisions as a daring affront to societal expectations regarding lifestyle, and not as an emotional incapacity to deal with the responsibilities of maturity. My few possessions represent a liberation from property, my meager bank account sufficient for 8 months of living like a vagabond prince.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for congratulation, something I find hard to self-manufacture, that I need the approval of others. It can be so wearing, constantly piecing together one's life. The parts that went right can never be lived over to give some space to breath. So I keep moving, sinking into the crowd, a quiet member of the parish of the traveling church as the earth rolls on beneath.