Why I Love to Travel

I've been a reader for as long as I can remember. I started reading early (my mom says I was four) and have never really stopped. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on, as a kid, and I read very quickly.

When I was ten, I caught a movie version of Great Expectations on PBS one night, and was enraptured. I immediately checked out the book from the library. It was not an easy read, and I missed a lot of the deeper themes, but I loved the story. Dickens led to Shakespeare, which led to theatre, which is another post entirely.

My favorite types of books are the kind where the atmosphere is as important as plot or characters. Great Expectations is like that. You can feel the marshes and the mists of England when you're reading it. Pip's senses become yours, and you are transported. The same can be said for Swamplandia, Karen Russell's gorgeous story of courage and grief in Western Florida. I smell sage and roasting chilies when I read Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees. Years ago, I directed a community theatre production of Steel Magnolias, in a barely insulated hall with insufficient heating, during one of the coldest winters Oregon had ever seen. But through Robert Harling's script, the room was filled with the sultriness and dense humidity of a Louisiana summer.

I love books where there is a sense that THIS story can only happen in THIS place. The characters could stay the same. The plot could stay the same. But there is an essential belonging of the story to a specific place. Would Christy be Christy if it took place anywhere other than Tennessee? Twilight is a terrible book, but as a lifelong Pacific Northwest resident, I can tell you that it captures the fragrant green drizzle of my home perfectly.

All of these stories, with their differing flavors and moods, make me hungry for more. It's not enough to read about dripping Spanish moss and ghostly shadows in the gothic South. I need to experience it for myself. I read about frozen waves in New England and have to stop myself from loading up the RV and heading to Maine. Reading creates a longing in me for places that are unfamiliar, and (almost always) once we get there, the places are even better than they were in my imagination. Traveling fills in the blank spots and gives me a fuller, richer, more beautiful picture of the soil that grows stories.

So if your child is a reader, be careful. You might be raising a traveler as well.