Whether it’s a quiet Gotlandic fishing village, a traditional Mexico pueblo, a trendy American city, or a struggling Indian slum, each gps coordinate of the earth has an attraction from at least a handful of globe trekkers who want to see it, experience it, eat there, stay the night. If you identify with the traveler archetype, it is easy to feel restless, always on the move, never quite satisfied with settling to one place at one time. This
is completely normal, as an inherent recognition of our primal nomadic nature. There is so much of the world to see, and we are intimately aware of our marginal and ephemeral time to explore it. There is always a billboard of another beautiful far away city in every airport, the swirling journey continues. Wherever you live, you can find people who have traveled from distant and remote parts of the world, to spend a short time in the place you live. Being from a small northern Canadian village built on the backbone of mining and fishing, with a few thousand inhabitants where nothing seems to change, and tourism appears to be nil, I would not expect to see internationals who desperately want to find it, but in reality there are.
For those intrepid few who have chosen a more stoic lifestyle, and opted to live minimalistically on the road, there is an unmistakable urge for movement, one feels the unrelenting urge to keep going in order to thrive. This puts you in some very interesting locations, and run ins with some eclectic folk that you would otherwise never meet eyes with. But when you learn to tread with hoof and paw in a slower fashion, you will see that people will come to you. Eventually even the cultured and seasoned traveler needs to put down roots and find a land where he himself is King.
Then comes the stage of integration of seeing your home as your hearth and hall. But this is far from simple accepted sedentism or domestication, it is about seeing your homeland from a perspective that inherits a new bio-regional importance. If these ideals can be exemplified, and valuation can be extracted out of the normal and overlooked aspects everyday life, then chances are someone else will be able to see this, and make an effort to experience it as well. The intimately social creature need not worry, because if you tune into your home, you can probably bring out at least ten things that would attract a traveler to your city, town or whatever. A frozen pond near your house may seem like something you walk passed everyday without giving much mention to, but for someone who may have never seen snow or ice, it is an exotic biosphere, with opportunities for ice-fishing. Likewise for someone from the north who may have never seen palm trees, a trip to the tropics may be one of a great wealth of experience.
There is such a vast breadth of intentional travel in the modern age, that is also goes without saying that there may be several niche reasonings for someone to come your way that would otherwise stay at home. Hunters to stalk specific game in a foreign country where wildlife may only inhabit a small rural area off the beaten tourist routes. Food lovers who may be seeking out gastronomic specialties and exotic dishes, writers looking for the perfect b&b for finishing a book, or researchers looking to study rare plant and animal species in your backyard. More airports are being built and the people living there are crossing paths with new company, knowledge is being exchanged, and the world is becoming more accessible. When you start to think of your home as the culmination of a trip, one gains a new perspective on where you are in the world. It’s the easily recognizable notion of recognizing the significance of a place, and your position in it, the symbol of the arrow on the global map that says ‘You are Here’.
:aferalspirit: 