Take me to Cornwall or Florence or India, anyplace but Maryland. One of the primary reasons I read novels is to be swept away to a different place, one so unlike where I live in Maryland. I recently picked up a biography that took place in Brunswick, Maryland the next town over, and put it down after two chapters since it felt too close to home.
I love to travel and explore although I haven’t had as much time to engage in it as I am now a mother of two young boys. As a teenager I attended a wedding in Venezuela traveling with the bride and groom on their honeymoon, took an art trip to Italy with my college professor and peers, visited my husband (then boyfriend) in Guatemala while he served in the Peace Corps, saw Jamaica by way of local buses and other rickety transport, and finally discovered my father’s homeland as he introduced Hungary to me through his own eyes.
Our trips are now relegated to short mini-vacations and a camping trip thrown in here and there. On occasion I even get to slip away without the ties of my family to have a girl’s weekend in New York City, Miami or at a secluded cabin in West Virginia. But I do crave the adventure that foreign travel promises.
So in the meantime, I read. I am currently reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert which is as much a travelogue as it is a memoir about a woman seeking to find her authentic self through pleasure and spiritual devotion. What could be better than packing up your life for one year to travel to three very distinct places? It may not be for everyone, but at least we can read about her experiences.
As the boys grow older we have our sights on more adventurous travel, but until then I have my novels and wonderful memories of trips taken to exotic and foreign lands to tide me over.
