Returning just last week from my own adventure I was delighted to read Christopher Solomon’s Personal Journeys article The New York Times, Deep in the Heart of Nowhere.
He writes, “When I have a few days to spare, I flee in the opposite direction, away from the hive. I don’t mean I simply like lesser-known destinations. No, I love to go deep — and the more remote and vacant, the better. I’ve got no beef with Manhattan. I’ve met fascinating people in Seattle bars and in Boston suburbs and in tiny ski towns high in the Rockies. But give me the empty places, the abandoned places, the mountains where the sound of the wind through the ponderosas draws a shivery finger down your spine.”
But what was reinforced on my own trip over the last few weeks was not my love for remoteness, although I do like quite, solitary vacations from time to time, but rather my passion for the novel, the different. Exposing myself to the people, places, food and cultures on other side of the world I became almost fearful of the sameness that awaited me when I got home.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the things that I have here at home, and I was glad to come back. But when I travel I want to make sure that I continue to look for the new and different around me. And better yet, appreciate and push myself towards the new and different in Seattle.
