returning home

Occasionally, I hear comments like “I wouldn’t want to travel with a tour group. Not enough freedom. You have to stick to a schedule. I’d rather do it on my own.” There’s merit to that, of course—and I sympathize. In an ideal world, that might be what I’d want to do, too.

But maybe not. In an ideal world, what I’d like to do is tour with a small group led by a knowledgeable guide, then follow that tour with a chunk of time on my own to move at my own pace, go wherever I want to go (returning, no doubt, to some of the places that had piqued my interest and left me wanting to see more), explore places I’d only heard about, and spend as much time as I wanted poking my nose into all the nooks and crannies. (Ever wonder what a cranny is? Me, too.) This might mean returning to places we’d skipped through far too quickly on the tour or striking out for new territory.

The problem is … money … time … expertise … other commitments … I’m sure you can think of more. And then, there’s the issue of the purpose of the trip. If the purpose is chiefly to get a change of scene and enjoy the camaraderie of friends and new acquaintances, I can be happy on a cruise; but if the purpose is to explore and learn, I would find a cruise—with its brief port stops—frustrating.  
I consider myself fortunate to have made my first Atlantic crossing many years ago not on a jumbo jet, but on an ocean liner. There was a sense of the momentous. The dock was crowded with travelers and well-wishers seeing them off. Bon voyage meant literally “bon voyage,” the ship’s horn blared—loud, demanding and heard by all—and we crowded the railing to wave good-by to those seeing us off.

It took us 10 days to sail from New York across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean to dock in Italy. Ten days to contemplate the prospect ahead of me. Would I, without a word of Italian, be able to communicate? What would people think of us? How would we negotiate border crossings from one country to another? Days on board were spent chatting with fellow travelers from around the globe, playing games, reading, watching movies, and settling into a mindset focused on the road trip to come. By the time we disembarked, I felt I had traveled an enormous distance.

And by the time I returned home, that distance had morphed into something much more than geographical. It was personal. It isn’t true, for me, that “you can’t go home again,” but it was and continues to be true that I can’t go home unchanged.
                                                                         September 8, 2014