David Murdock Column: On traveling (with a full tank of gas and a yen for wandering)

There’s a small controversy brewing in the percolator of the internet over, of all things, travel.

Agnes Callard, a philosophy professor from the University of Chicago, published an essay in The New Yorker titled “The Case Against Travel” back in June, and it has been rebutted by several other writers. In fact, I didn’t see her original article until those rebuttals started showing up in my news aggregator — The New Yorker is not a publication which I normally read.

I’m not going to rebut Callard or her opponents. Honestly, I simply don’t have a dog in this fight.

There are people who love to travel and find much personal reward in it — I am not one of those people. At best, I am a reluctant traveler. In fact, I wouldn’t likely have noticed the whole kerfuffle had I not been reading Alain de Botton’s 2002 book, “The Art of Travel.”

To tell y’all the truth, I can’t even say why I ordered that book. The likeliest explanation is that it was mentioned favorably in a book I was reading, I found an inexpensive copy, and voila.

What I do know is that I’m truly enjoying de Botton’s book. It’s arranged in chapters that need not be read sequentially, and I’m not. The first morning after it arrived, I picked it up to peruse the table of contents, saw a chapter titled “On Habit,” and … well, I just had to read that one. After enjoying it, I noticed an earlier chapter titled “On the Sublime” — another “must read.” Then, “On Curiosity” — same story.

So, I’ve been reading a chapter or two of this book every morning since. This morning, I read “On the Country and the City,” which was wonderful. It chronicles de Botton’s three-day trip to the Lake District in the United Kingdom.

All the chapters begin by listing a “place” and a “guide.” The place for this chapter is obvious, but the guide is the poet William Wordsworth, likely the most famous resident of the Lake District, who died in 1850. Although he lived in London for years, he always yearned for his home there.

Then it sort of popped into my head that I travel like I’m reading this book — without any sort of plan whatsoever. There are people who plan out vacations to the last detail; I am not one of them. “Just get in the car and go” is my motto. That so irritates some people that I usually find it easier simply to travel alone.

My favorite trips have been like that — I had a general idea of where I was headed, but no particular timetable. Usually, I don’t even bother with reservations, unless I’m going somewhere that will likely require one. By the way, one of my favorite travel stories of all time involves trying to find a hotel in a city in which I’d never been as night was falling.

When I get wherever there is, I like to look around — that’s why tour group packages are out of the question for me. Again, some of my favorite travel stories involve times where I was simply looking around wherever I found myself.

One of my favorite trips was back in 2020 that started when I flipped a coin at the end of my driveway to see which way I was going to go … and went … and had the best time. One can do a lot with a full tank of gas and a yen for wandering.

Most of the time, though, I’m quite content to stay home. Attalla itself is so fascinating to me that I’m not quite done with looking at it. That mountain visible from my front porch in Reece City fascinates me so that I don’t think I’ll ever quite end my viewing of it. It changes so from season to season. There’s just so much to see here, if one looks around.

I wouldn’t have even left the house at all yesterday had it not been for the fact that I was out of notebook paper, a fact I didn’t realize until I was writing. I had one sheet left. What if I had more than one notebook-paper-sheet of things to say? I never know what I have to say until I’ve said it.

So, off to Walmart for paper (it was that early), and then … hey, Cracker Barrel is going to open in a few minutes. Haven’t been there in a while. I made it home, but I wandered around a bit before I did. One of these days, I’m going to get a map of Etowah County and drive on all the roads in the county. But I know very well that it will take more than a day.

I’m simply not a natural at traveling like Dad was. Mom used to say, “That man won’t let his shirttail touch his back.” That’s simply not me — I’m fine with settling in with a book. However, I’m starting to feel that old familiar need to wander. It’s been coming on a while. It’s not reading about traveling that makes me want to travel; I’m reading about traveling because I want to travel. I’ll let y’all know.

David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions reflected are his own.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: David Murdock looks at traveling