All tagged Slow travel
Join Ellen Barone on a Scottish adventure. From the ancient charm of Edinburgh to the coastal haven of Charlestown, her journey unfolds tales of warmth, unexpected friendships, and the timeless allure of Scotland. This is more than a travelogue; it's a love affair with a place that becomes a cherished second home.
Thirty-seven days into self-isolation Ellen Barone asked her husband Hank, “Are you lonely?” Like much of the world’s population, they are physical-distancing and staying home to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19. Would this, she worried, lead to loneliness? And, in turn, to biological effects as deadly as the virus itself? Instead, isolation has brought clarity to something they’d innately suspected all along.
by B.J. Stolbov
I don’t like jets. Yes, I know, they are the most convenient way to get somewhere far away quickly, but I still don’t like them. Jets are just tubes with seats. Soulless. They make me feel detached from the earth.
I don’t like taxis, either. I know that they get me quickly from place to place, mostly to or from airports. They are a necessary convenience. I often try to engage the taxi driver in conversation, but we both know that this is only a business transaction, and I know that the taxi driver’s job is to make the most money from an uninformed traveler. I find it unpleasant, and I’m glad to pay and get out of a taxi as quickly as possible.
I do like to travel slowly. I try to choose the slowest form of transportation available: be it car, bus, motor scooter, bicycle, boat, canoe, kayak, raft, horse, mule, elephant, or, my favorite, walking. I like to see the landscape; I like to see mountains and rivers, rocks and caves, trees and plants. It is the scenery moving by me slowly that soothes my soul.
Sure, I want to go somewhere, but the where is not really the point. A hotel room is just a bed with a roof (when you close your eyes, all hotel rooms look the same). A simple guesthouse with a friendly host is fine for me. A bed under the stars is better. When I want to see places, I want to see the roads, rivers, and paths that connect these places. The adventure is in the getting there.
For me, traveling is in the snap of a twig underfoot bringing me directly into the world around me, the creaking of a bicycle seat at the turn at the bottom of a hill, the rocking in the wind and waves of the small boat, the bumping and bouncing of a bus, the road and the trees and the fields rolling by, the houses with their doors open, and the people, especially the children, smiling and waving as I go by; they are all a part, the most important part, of my journey.
Inspired by a fellow traveler's revelation about unwanted downtime during an African safari, in this essay, Ellen Barone reflects on the attraction of embracing stillness and challenging societal expectations about busyness.
