A Birthday Rumination on Slow Travel

And asking whether Mark Twain had it right

From my Covid sickbed, I listen to another of Craig Johnson’s Longmire books about a modern lawman policing Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains. In this one, Walt Longmire is tracking an escaped murderer as a spring snowstorm blows into the region, thwarting him at every turn. I doze as the narrator’s baritone carries me into Walt’s fever-dream encounters with Cheyenne and Crow Indian spirits, an avenging mountain lion, and the soul of a child buried in the Cloud View Wilderness Area. 

I wake up on a coughing jag, blow my nose, take some Ibuprofen, and cry for Wyoming: the Wind River Canyon, Thermopolis, Chief Joseph Highway, Ten Sleep, Shell Canyon, Medicine Wheel. Is the virus making me melancholy for these places? If so, it’s abetted by the countdown to my January birthday, when I’ll wrestle with the annual time/money tradeoff. I want to take a month out West visiting my favorite roads and scenery, but then again, that’s a month I’m not working. Can I wrap up my existing projects by the summer solstice? Wait! What about all those motorcycling wonderlands I’ve only read about or heard described by fellow travelers? How can I possibly see and do everything on two wheels that I’ve dreamed about? Do I have another ten years on two wheels? Fifteen? One?

Me and my first motorcycle at Colorado National Monument, 2017. Too long ago.

There’s always another horizon. Always another little niche to explore, even in your own backyard. My travels have made me more aware than ever how fragile this life is, and how swiftly it passes.

Mark Twain had it right when he said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” The only problem with this statement is that we’re the most-traveled generation of humans ever to live on the planet, and this world is still no paradise—children are human shields in war zones, Flint’s municipal water is still toxic, and school board officials require armed security details.

Thanks to Roadwolf Design for this graphic.

If we travelers don’t extract “wholesome, charitable views” from our experiences and use them to improve the world, aren’t we just self-indulgently gandering around burning dinosaurs through our combustion engines? 

I’ve traveled throughout North America, mostly on the road instead of in the air. Slow travel has brought me into contact with the diversity of fellow Americans, from hospital executives to housekeepers, life insurance agents to long-haul truckers. I am fascinated by how their their views were formed and how they act on their beliefs.

Thanks to traveling slow and sinking into the landscape, avoiding cow pats and Black Angus calves on BLM and Forestry Service roads, I can relate to the thorny disputes between ranchers, environmentalists, and the federal agencies that regulate land use. I’ve overheard ranchers talk about this in diners, and shared campfires with people who self-identify as radical environmentalists. I can see that people on all sides are trying to forge a path to their definition of justice as they skirmish verbally, legally, and physically. Although it’s sometimes difficult, I can see the humanity in them all.

You might ask if this ability to see humanity in all speaks more to my age than my travels. Well, it’s true that you can only accumulate so many experiences in a single year, and I’ve had 62 of them. Choosing to prioritize traveling and reading widely have brought me to this place. No doubt. Age and experience are symbiotic.

My Birthday Wish from YOU

Fellow travelers, it’s my birthday wish that we would have a little conversation about this passion of ours and the good we can do with it or because of it. My interest goes beyond cutting big checks for charities (laudable as that is). I want to know if your travels have changed your world view? Are you reading translated books or foreign news sites? In what ways are you a different person after repeatedly venturing more than 500 miles from home?

Standing by for your comments. Please make my birthday wish come true.