The past week has been weird, and I spent much of it with a fever and not feeling too well. Okay now that that’s out of the way! After spending a few days in Portland I traveled south to the town or Corvallis. I grew up near Corvallis so I am fairly familiar with the […]

It feels really good to finally be out of Olympia! Even though I have been very busy in the past few weeks it seems like I finally have something positive to write about! I’ve been contemplating my research quite a bit in the past week or so. People i’ve met with at this point seem […]

The sound of a beer being popped open, heard by no one, but echoing through the walls of the establishment. “You should not drink in the morning”. Replied the conscious of the man who was quickly loosing all interest in society, but why bother, Olympia is a fine place to live. I never wanted to […]

There are in our existence spots of time, That with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating virtue… That penetrates, enables us to mount, When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen This second half of the art of travel has been personally much more inspiring. The sections “on the country and the city” and […]

“Journeys are the midwives of thought.” - Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

I agree with De Botton in a general sense in regards to this statement. There are many different types of journeys, just like there are many different types of thoughts and ways of thinking. I do think that traveling is a great way to produce the thoughts one might have otherwise never had. Putting yourself in a different setting or new place can be a great way to feel a new found sense of inspiration and creative energy. Just like how the process of returning to a place of familiar comfort might invoke a certain sense of relaxed thoughts or emotions.

I find the various ways in which we travel to be vastly important in regards to the type of thinking we will be doing over the course of our journeys. People have always traveled, and most certainly continue to do so, however, the ways in which we travel will inevitably change.

Traveling by horse and buggy may be of no convenience in the modern age of urban development, although traveling by automobile or plane may come carrying other costs, such as the devastating effects on the environment and general disregard for natural and urban spaces.

For now the convenience of petroleum powered vessels is something people seem to enjoy, even if it means putting up with seen and unseen pollution. In already rapidly growing urban environments this seems to be most visually apparent. Here is a picture of Los Angels taken in 2014 as a reference:

I think the way that we travel will be forced into a state of necessary innovation, for our survival, comfort, and the simple desire for more and more “modern” technologies. As these technologies change it will have the power to dramatically alter our current cityscapes the infrastructure connecting our cities and the defining soundmarks which they contain.

We now live in a very fast paced, almost hyper real environment, where the people depend vary heavily on the technologies they embrace. There are many reasons why people travel, regardless of this people also desire to travel greater distances in less and less time. What unseen effects could a shortened travel time be having on the human psyche?

Generally when traveling by ship, plane, or train, it’s reasonable to believed that one might expect their journey to last a certain amount of measurable time. I agree with De Bottons next statement that, “Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.” They help provide the individual with a steady stream of visual stimuli, while simultaneously presenting what could be seen as an increasingly rare opportunity to be held captive in a space long enough to stir up some general kind of thought or emotion.

In addition to this, it is a relatively passive experience to travel by plane, ship, or train. Unless you are the pilot, or captain, once you are on board, it is generally expected that you will not be the one operating the vessel in which you are traveling. This is obviously different then when one is traveling by operating an automobile, bicycle, or pair of legs. By changing the way in which we interact with the environment we are traveling through, how are our thoughts impacted during the journey?

People travel for many different reasons and I find it interesting what people are looking for when they do. “What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.” If you grew up in a certain type of setting the opposite may then appeal to you. Maybe you are looking for simplicity, maybe it’s complexity that you desire. Maybe you are traveling to no great destination but the process of going there is of particular interest or anxiety.

I think that traveling can be used as an exercise to help identify aspects of a culture that you are longing for and I think a lot of it has to do with arrivals and departures. For example, I am always glad to leave Olympia, but there is a certain sense of ease when I return. Other places may have a nostalgic type of magnet effect creating a sense of longing to be there instead of wherever you now find your body.

The ways we travel in the future will be different from the ways we travel now, just like they are different now from how they have existed in the past. We should take the opportunity to create better infrastructure and radically redesign the ways in which we travel so that they can provide benefit for people and the environment.