A recent essay I published brought back to me how much and how quickly travel is changing. And how quickly history is forgotten. Unless you’re watching an old movie (wow! people went to baseball games in 3-piece suits?) or looking at old pictures, technology and time can sneak up on you–and you realize that fond memory of yours sounds like complete gibberish to someone of a younger generation.
I haven’t had kids yet, but I already know what a complete dinosaur I am going to sound like to them. It will be hard for him or her to understand there was a point in our history where we actually respected our own privacy and didn’t want people knowing where we were at every turn. That we used to be worried that the government was secretly tracking us rather than us openly broadcasting ourselves.
They will find it hard to believe, if they don’t outright scoff, that there was a time when people looked forward to getting their mail. My kids, when and if I have them, will go wild-eyed when I tell them how I used to beg and plead for the opportunity to answer the phone. That the phone ringing was somewhat of an event. And that it was almost always someone you wanted to talk to on the other end. I was extremely happy whenever I was granted the opportunity to say “hello?” and then pass the phone to my mom or dad.
But this is about traveling. This country was “founded” by people who wrote long hand-written letters to people, knowing they wouldn’t get them for six or ten months, if ever.
“My dearest Beatriceaux, I am writing this on a calm sea with fourteen grains in the weather gauge – whatever that means – and a delicious pound of mealy bread in my belly. The two pints of perfume I wear every day, what with bathing being dangerous and all, makes my eyes water and my wig itch…”
(sixteen more pages of quill scratching)
“…and so, in closing, dearest Beatriceaux, I will look fondly upon the sketching I have of you, drawn by that heathen from French Polynesia, and think of our fond reunion in six years time. Unless, you know, one of us should tragically die, which could totally happen because we live in an ignorant time. Yours for all of eternity, or about ten years maybe, Winthrop”
(It should be noted that the preceding was fabricated for the purposes of making a point and that it is not meant to be a literal truth.)
Nowadays, if you don’t return a text in less than ten minutes, you are presumed missing.
When I travel now I bring a smartphone and a camera and a tablet and a laptop, and I use apps and I send emails and text messages and a person could probably pinpoint my exact location at all times. If they get really worried, I can have a video call with them.
I used to travel with a map or a guidebook (useless and out of date, both) and nobody had a clue where I was, usually not even me. If someone needed to reach me in an emergency they would have been screwed.
I was raised to get dressed up when I travelled. Getting on an airplane, to my parents, was a lot like going to church.
Now people show up with pillows and in their socks, like they’re on their way to a pajama party. Either that or they sit next to you in shorts, with a flip flop dangling off their hairy foot in your face.
I don’t know what I’m even talking about right now.
To me, traveling is mostly about exploring. And observing. And putting up with loads of crap that seems entirely unnecessary. Of wandering down streets and seeing new streets and so following those streets, and then seeing a bar, and wandering in, and listening to strangers, and then wandering some more, and then noticing its getting dark, and you don’t know where you are, and so meeting a stranger, who points you to where he thinks you are saying you want to go, but who knows, and finally making your way to where you’ve got your stuff, and thanking high heaven you made it and being proud that you lived by your wits and survived. That’s how I like to roll.
Or that’s how I used to. Now, unless I’m relying on my iPhone map, I always know where I am. If I think I’m lost, it tells me how to get home. I don’t need some stranger to point me in the completely wrong direction. I always know where I am.
When I was in Kobe, Japan, I found myself out late, and unable to communicate to the Japanese cab driver the concept of ship. I tried saying the word ship. Which works almost everywhere. Most of the world seems to speak English. That didn’t work. So I tried charades, which also didn’t work. I finally had to draw a boat. Nowadays I would just hand the driver my smartphone with the address right there in Japanese for him to read.
I like my technology. As an introverted traveler, it means I can travel without speaking to anyone at all! But, at the same time, I sort of miss having to fly by the seat of my pants.
