All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [6]
That trip established my penchant for travel—with its endless art, food, languages, and people to explore—as a distraction from emotional pain. I also realized, publishing my first freelance feature article in the Jerusalem Post while I was living on a kibbutz, that you can justify the whole footloose business by writing a few stories along the way. And even when I don’t muster up any serious work, when my career is hardly careening along as fast as it should be, here in my prime, going on trips can be a handy diversion from that very fact. It strikes me that when I’m traveling, I have stories to tell and postcards to send, and I appear to be accomplishing something in life just by going to exotic places. My friends with their husbands and children and carpools and Tater Tot tantrums think I’m lucky, I’m free, my life is immeasurably more interesting than theirs. Maybe I’m not churning out books, but I’m writing articles published in glossy magazines that they’re happy to read when they finally get a chance to sit down to have their highlights done. It never crosses their minds that I might wish to have some of their cozy and boring stability.
At home, with my suitcase still unpacked, I’m afraid I’ve reached a point in my life where, despite all of my traveling, I am not moving at all.
I TALLY UP my frequent-flier miles and consider which friends I could stay with in foreign countries, then search around for tickets, but I can’t come up with anything right. I’m perplexed. If I’m trying to escape my feelings about the person I used to rely on to escape my feelings—or if I’m running off from the uncomfortable realization that I’m always trying to run off—it all sort of cancels itself out. The only thing that’s clear is that I need to go somewhere. But if I went to a foreign city with great museums and restaurants, I’d just miss the Professor.
The one place I could really lose him would be in the wilderness; he’d never find himself anywhere that doesn’t sell Gitanes and a good espresso.
That’s not such a bad idea. My parents used to send us kids off on character-building backpacking trips when we were in our teens, which—when we finally made it to the crest of a 14,000-foot Colorado peak, exhausted and exhilarated—really did improve our self-esteem. It’s not just the physical challenge that’s rejuvenating: in the mountains, you’re stripped down to the essentials of who you are, a friendly human being out there among the blue jays and deer, and you have no choice but to feel benevolent toward yourself and everyone else. Long before I had the habit of traveling to foreign countries to restore myself, I used to head to the wilderness.
I recall how healing it was once, when I was a sophomore at a sophisticated Eastern college—far from home and intimidated by fellow students who seemed so worldly to me—to send out a rescue mission for my lost happy self by spending a few days hiking around in the Rockies. Right away, I could breathe better. The thing about being out in the wild is that your angst seems so small when you’re surrounded by trees, rocks, and vast, sweeping views. Hiking around, I realized that deep down, just between me and the pine trees, I was absolutely fine. I might not be from New York City, but Colorado smells a lot