Travel Slower, Connect Faster
New Priorities for Ecologically Conscious Travel
One of the first trips I can recall clearly is a family trip from Chicago to San Francisco when I was around eight or nine years old. I remember the distinct, discombobulating feeling of staring out the window of our rental car at the new landscape taken up with hills and ocean. After only a couple of hours on our flight, we had entered what seemed to be an entirely different world. Despite the unsettling unfamiliarity of this land, or perhaps even because of it, I was hooked; I’ve been flying ever since.
That is until I found myself, along with the rest of the world, grounded in March of 2020. For days on end, I sat at the desk in my childhood bedroom staring out at the barren trees in the backyard. I watched them slowly bud, coming back to life after their winter rest. In the midst of the boredom, a strange thing took root. I became invested in the large oak out my window. I was entertained by, even excited about the nuanced growth of its fresh green leaves. Without even realizing it, I was building a relationship with the land. As spring approached, I, too, came to life with the green sprouts and the yellow tulips. I started composting and made plans for a garden. This tiny world wasn’t so boring after all: it was filled with slow and patient beauties.
Place attachment is a wonderful thing, and as a climate activist, it’s an important one. It’s helped to ground me amidst all kinds of anxiety, including pandemic, political, and climate-fueled stress. Now, as I’ve re-entered a season of mobility, I’ve discovered a more intentional, sustainable, and place-connected way to travel: by rail.
Our patterns of travel disconnect us. They espouse the mantra of point A to point B. The nuanced beauty of the in-between is forgotten, the magnitude of the journey lost. Slow, attentive travel challenges that disconnectedness. When I took a train from Chicago to Pittsburgh, the twelve-hour journey made each shift in landscape and culture seem soft and significant. When I took the one-and-a-half-hour flight home, the journey was more of an irrelevant annoyance.
I’ve stared out the window past farms and cities, oil wells and wind turbines, hills and prairies. I’ve eaten and I’ve slept, and I’ve changed with the landscape. I’ve become more connected and ultimately, more human.
The climate crisis we face today is not just a technological failing. It is a failure of the Western, industrial ways that fuel it. Climate change reveals a deeper, more spiritual crisis. As Pope Francis puts it in Laudato Si, the growing deserts of our world reflect the internal deserts of our hearts. Our agendas are filled with checkpoints rather than connections. The nuance of a process is substituted for the annoyance of a holdup. Out eternal rush is insatiable, and it’s led us to value extraction over relationship.
I’m sitting on the train right now in the midst of a day and a half ride from Chicago to Malta, Montana. On the way, I’ve made friends who come from places ranging from Washington to West Virginia. I’ve laughed and talked and listened to all manner of conversations that reverberate throughout the train cars. I’ve stared out the window past farms and cities, oil wells and wind turbines, hills and prairies. I’ve eaten and I’ve slept, and I’ve changed with the landscape. I’ve become more connected and ultimately, more human.
As with everything, this way is not without complexity. The irony of the name “Empire Builder” for this westward route is not lost on me. The construction of these tracks is tied up in the tears of indigenous peoples whose relationships with their lands were desecrated by the agenda of “manifest destiny.” I’m trespassing on stolen lands, taken in the name of empire.
It’s not that the way of the train is innocent. It needs its own interrogation. However, this new practice of travel has left me with an important revelation as we hurtle towards climate disaster: slowing down might be our only hope.
