The Scottish Highlands near Glencoe.
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Why Travel
I recently learned I received a 2025 Lilly Teacher Creativity Grant, which will allow me to travel to Britain this upcoming summer! To say the least, I’m ecstatic. My proposal is to visit Scotland and England. While I am working out the specifics, in putting together my initial proposal, as well as the actual itinerary, I’ve been thinking about my reasons for traveling. Why travel means what it does, why I’m always thinking about the next adventure, why it is that I travel.
Experiences
Gaining new and broadening experiences is at the heart of travel for me. I want to hear (and however poorly attempt to speak) diverse languages and dialects, eat new foods, see works of art and architecture, walk across landscapes, have my comfort zone stretched. I believe people are endlessly fascinating and the world is incredibly beautiful, and I want to experience people and places first-hand.
Movement
And I want to experience these places on foot. I want to walk the cities and woodlands and countryside. I often walk ten miles a day on a trip, whether it be through Central Park, down 5th Avenue, and over to the High Line; from the Left Bank up to Sacre-Coeur; from the Capitol down the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial; or from one end of the beach to the other. I know this may not sound like a vacation to some, but seeing a place on foot is my favorite way of doing so.
(For this summer’s trip, the hope is to walk Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, the Scottish Highlands near Glencoe, Oban’s waterfront and the Isle of Kerrera, London’s streets and parks and riverbank, and the Cotswolds.)
Family
This summer’s trip will be based on three aspects of my life: being a father, a family, and an individual. The first week will be spent with my son in Scotland; for the second, we will be joined by my wife and daughter in London; the third I’ll be solo.
And while I am looking forward to the last section, travel for me is intricately connected with family. Growing up, I was fortunate to have a family that took vacations together. This was in part because my parents didn’t have a place to drop us off for the week, so they had to take us along. But it was also important to them to take trips as a family. We went to the Atlantic Ocean, the western National Parks, the upper Midwest, Disney World and Cedar Point, Chicago and its baseball stadiums. Every August we went somewhere together.
My wife and I are fortunate to have family help. We’ve taken trips just the two of us, and we’ve taken trips with two of our three kids. Our oldest has disabilities and isn’t able to do all of the travel we’ve done. But we’ve also all crowded into the van to drive across the country. He loves jumping into a hotel pool as much as any boy possibly could.
And as much as I want to visit new places and gain new experiences for myself, I also want it for my wife and children. I hope I’ll never forget when my then-eleven-year-old son played soccer in the Luxembourg Gardens with a group of French boys; I hope he won’t forget either. Or that first family trip to the ocean together, body surfing, the Broadway musical in New York, hot dogs at Wrigley Field.
Self-Discovery
In a wide-ranging interview I’ll link below, Rick Steves says there are three types of travelers: tourists, travelers, and pilgrims. I appreciate sitting by the pool or lying on the beach, book in hand, as much as the next person, but I fall more into the latter two categories. (I would broaden the meaning of a pilgrimage to include art, literature, culture, and nature, in addition to ancient and historic religious sites.) Steves encourages travelers to be temporary locals, to avoid long lines and expensive gimmicks, to ride public transit and eat where the locals do, to attend Evensong or hike a mountain and sit for a while. He says we are fearful of what we don’t know, but once we know it, the propaganda doesn’t hold.
I’ve been joking with Cassie that in going to England, I feel like I'm going home. Which, in a very real sense, is absurd. I have no direct English ties I know of. Yet I’ve been a devotee of English Literature for the last twenty years, and I’ve wanted to hike the English countryside for just as long. And then tea in the afternoon, and from October till April I wear wool as often as I’m able. I sometimes think of being a shepherd.
Who knows, maybe it won’t connect the way I imagine, but I think it will. The longer I live, the more I seem to know such things.
I often recall the G.K. Chesterton story about the traveler who sets out on a voyage, only to return to the same place from which he had started. But on the returning, he is a different person. That to me is travel.
A mill at Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds, England
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Miscellany
This was first passed on to me as a podcast, though you can either listen to or read it with the link above. My appreciation for Steves has spanned several seasons: first, as the geeky guide on his PBS shows; then through his guidebooks; and currently his more reflective and retrospective side, having spent fifty years traveling as well as recently being diagnosed with cancer. A great read/listen about travel and its potential impacts from a wise and thoughtful man.
This year marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, and the New York Times Travel section has marked the occasion by selecting her environs as a top travel spot for 2025. I won’t be too far from her family home in Chawton when, so I’ll see about a visit to Jane Austen’s House and museum. But even if you won’t be making the trek, what an occasion for reading or re-reading her work. I’m currently re-reading Pride and Prejudice and hope to do the same with Persuasion before departing.
To Spring
While I’ve enjoyed the Cold Comforts and hygge that I wrote about last month, especially reading by the fire, additional family movie nights, and the slower extracurricular schedule, I’m ready for spring, for days in the 40s and even 50s, getting my wet boots back out and on, the arrival of the season’s harbingers: the daffodils and crocuses and tulips, the geese flying overhead, the greening of the grass. Only a few more weeks. Only a few more weeks.
I am excited for you, J! I can't wait to hear about your experience. It is a trip I would love to do myself someday.
Bravo, Jason! Excited for you (and your family), and eager to learn the myriad ways this will influence you in the years and decades to come.