Leaving the system
I’m always amazed with how traveling across the world in 2014 must be remarkably different than it was for the other 99.99% of human existence. If I wanted to travel from Chicago to London 200 years ago, it would likely be a trip that involved a horse, an ocean, a train, and probably more horses. It would take months and someone in my group would have definitely died of dysentery along the way. Also, by the time I got there I’d have some kind of horrific limp or a scar. Yet, as I traveled would see the landscape gradually change before my eyes. I would probably take an unreliable railroad to New York City. Hop on a ship to Bristol or Cardiff, depart and then ride or walk to London, witnessing the villages along the way become more and more dense as I finally saw the outskirts of the city, and finally made my way to its urban center. I’m stating the obvious, but travel isn’t quite as linear. Sure, that same journey today can be done in half a day while sitting on a magic chair in the sky drinking ginger ale and watching Pixar movies. But it’s not as linear a trip anymore. Let me try to explain.
The first time I left the country, I did a typical summer study abroad in England — spending the first leg in Stratford-upon-Avon. I flew out of Chicago O’Hare airport, landed at Heathrow, then got on a bus to Stratford. My first English “experience” was a highway rest stop in the middle of nowhere between London and Stratford. 4,000 miles of travel and the first time I was able to breathe English air or interact with the locals was a rest stop. When we travel, we travel in a closed system. I wasn’t traveling to Stratford. I was in a train, or a plane, or a bus, traveling to Stratford. I didn’t travel. I think this is is an under discussed externality of travel. That when we do, we don’t experience the journey.
I took a trip to Ireland the year after that. Yes, I got to my hotel with planes, trains and taxis because even though I’m making a point today, I’m not a savage. But my first day in Ireland I did something that I’ve never done before, and I’m willing to bet you haven’t either. My hostel was in a village called Sixmilebridge, just outside Shannon, and I naturally started asking about the things to see and do. The guy who ran our inn suggested we visit a castle in a neighboring village. It was about 6 miles away. He told us to walk to it. “Wait…on the road? I asked.
“What? Of course you walk on the road!”
I could tell I had asked a really stupid question — but in my defense, I hadn’t walked anywhere in the past 3,000 miles of travel. I was primed to assume I couldn’t get anywhere unless the system took me there. How could I get to another town if there was no bus? No train? I would just walk there?!
We did. On the only road between the villages. When was the last time you walked from one city to another like it was the Oregon-damned-Trail?
It was the first time that I had left an urban location, walked through the countryside, to another location. I know this sounds weird, but for just a few miles, it felt right. To travel, and to do it by by strapping your backpack on and wearing your feet down crossing the countryside to someplace you’ve never been before.
I feel like we lose something when we don’t experience the journey. In a train, or in a plane, you’re closed off from the outside. It’s physics. Any object in a closed container that’s moving at a constant velocity doesn’t perceive to be in motion on the inside. Maybe I just don’t feel like I’m traveling when I’m staring at the seat in front of me.
Obviously no journey across continents can exist without some kind of vessel, but even on a boat, you’re still experiencing the crossing. It’s slow. You spend time outside on the deck, you see nothing but water and emptiness in all directions.
You aren't imprisoned from the world outside the vessel, as you would be in an airplane with small closed windows, flying 30,000 feet over the ocean. Sure you will end up in an airport in the country you are traveling to, but an airport is never very representative of a country. It’s sterile, someone there will speak your language, and there’s usually a food court with a McDonalds (unless it’s LAX). Once you get there, you don’t even have to leave the building to go to your next stop. Often, a train system will be connected to the airport (unless it’s New York City). For the right reasons, everything is somewhat standardized. In any big city there’s a light rail system paired with some kind of bus system. Train lines criss-cross through most cities, connecting at stations with big circles on subway maps. Regional trains travel into the heart of a city and usually if you want to go across a country, there’s only one big train station in town. The system is consistent and predictable. It gives a false sense of familiarity in places that should in all senses of the word, be foreign. It certainly makes the shock of “leaving the system,” stepping off the train and not being able to read any signs, or listen in on the conversations on the street all the more jarring. It’s one of the beautiful things about travel — culture shock. It’s also something that usually happens outside the system. On the other side of the bubble.
I think a lot about how the human experience changes every generation thanks to new technology. I also spend a lot of time in front of computer screens. I worry sometimes that for all the benefits that technology has given us — everything from the “magic metal birds” that can transport people through the sky, to telephones that let us have conversations with anyone all over the world, to trains, cars, and everything else, we can no longer truly explore. It’s nearly impossible to indulge in the primal urge that humans have had for it’s almost entire existence, to begin walking in one direction, to see where it goes. We don’t do that. We take roads. We negotiate through customs at the borders of nations. We have laws about how and where we can travel. We can only stay in some parts of the world for certain amounts of time, and in others, may never be allowed to visit.
In that same trip to Ireland, I had another experience I’ve never had. We spent a day on the biggest of the Aran Islands (Inishmore). It’s a place that couldn’t be further off “the system” (without fear of snakes and bears). There are steep cliffs on three sides of the island, hundreds of feet down to a swift rocky death below. There are no fences, no warnings. Just the cliffs, the ocean, and the long fall in between. There’s just something that ignites that caveman fire in all of us when you step to a ledge to look down, knowing that the only thing responsible for keeping you from death by rockface is you. It hasn’t been outsourced to a legal team, a fence, or a warning sign.
Even on the island itself roads are pretty limited. Sure there’s car access around the perimeter, but if you want to get to the interior, you can either bike on a trail, or what we did, carry your bike across the stones and crabgrass. I have to admit, as a guy who lives in a major city, commutes on a train for 2 hours every day, and spends at least 8 hours a day in front of a computer screen, going someplace with nothing but nature and no technological underpinnings is something I think about returning to experience every day.
Sure, none of these trips would have been possible without “the system.” I've been lucky enough to visit so many places thanks to planes, trains, buses, and more. Yet sometimes I’d like to travel outside the bubble. Without having to look at subway maps or bus schedules. Without having to get stamps in a passport or go through security. But, to just pick a direction and start walking.
The earth is over 24,000 miles across but I wouldn't be able to walk very far before I’d have to stop and join the system.
