“Mommy, Daddy!!!!!” he shrieked – completely out of the blue.
“What?!” we replied anxiously.
“I want to go on an airplane! I want to go on an airplane right now, and then check into a hotel! When can I?”
Seriously…that is a verbatim transcript of the conversation I had with my three-year-old travelling kid last night.
I think he has the travel bug.
I have called him, ‘bug’ in the past…but it was just short for ‘love bug’. And now my ‘love bug’ appears to be in love with travel…at the tender age of three.
It started me thinking…why exactly do people travel? What is that ‘bug’? Some people have it and some don’t. My friend Teri calls me regularly to ‘roll’ on travel stuff. She will leave a message with the same kind of ‘Mommy! Daddy!’ urgency that my son exhibited last night. “Hi, this is Teri!” Then she will howl, like a wolf calling to the full moon and say something like, “Travel emergency!! I need to talk. I’m thinking 
Max and Teri and I all DO roll on travel stuff. We are people who have been seriously bitten and infected with the travel bug. Perhaps I ‘gave it’ to Jacob by dragging him all over the planet, starting at the tender age of 4 months…or perhaps he was born to travel. I guess I will never know. But he loves it and one day he will be able to tell me why.
I am going to continue to ask people: why DO people travel…why do YOU travel? And I am going to keep updating this article with ‘post-scripts’ from people, as I get ‘em.
I can tell you why I do. I travel because it feeds my soul. I travel because it ‘smoothes’ me out – like a good meditation. Some of my best ideas and life-changing breakthroughs have occurred while travelling. My first trip abroad was to Switzerland when I was 15. It changed my life. The different languages, the Matterhorn, the fondue, the freedom! I felt that I had ‘arrived’ in my own spirit and body for the very first time. I sang James Taylor songs while hiking those Alps and thought profound thoughts while traversing a glacier. That trip began a lifetime travel spree. I spent a semester abroad in College and it snowballed from there, including a stint singing on a cruise ship to ‘feed my habit’. Many years, countries and miles later I once travelled to Athens to heal my broken spirit after miscarrying a hard won pregnancy (instead of taking antidepressants, as my shrink had suggested). Travel can be both a balm and an inspiration. GOING to the place is just as delicious as reflecting on the journeys. I will never forget hearing my son’s giggles as we biked along the sea on a French isle or the look on Jacob’s face when he spotted his first Greek donkey or having to stifle my giggles when he took a very, VERY serious inventory of blue planes at the Frankfurt Airport. Travel ‘does’ me like no other thing. I wish for my son, the same opportunity to explore the far corners of the planet and in his spirit.
That is why I travel. Why do you?
