Here we are, only days away from the official beginning of summer. The vacations of last summer have almost faded from memory. The media world is aglow with advertisements for the golden weeks ahead and how we can enjoy them, at a price. Right now, when we so much want to get away, almost any price seems worth paying. This desire to move must be a very deep and primitive instinct. After all, if it weren’t for restlessness and boredom the human race would never have migrated from Africa all over the planet, and America would still be a pristine wilderness.
Vacations are escape attempts. – not an escape from behind prison bars but from the open prison called habit. These small shifts in the language are revealing. Escape has become a synonym for adventure, freedom, and happiness, a chance to abandon the routine world for something a little closer to our dreams. Escape is movement. Escape is theater. We know we have escaped when the view out the window is different, and our daily routine has little moments of surprise in it. In short, we all need a vacation.
Vacations are as much a matter of personal taste as food or music. One person’s perfect getaway is another’s worst nightmare. His idea of paradise may be a week on a freezing golf course in Scotland, while she would much prefer a luxury resort in Aruba. So the huge vacation market, trying to cater to all tastes, is divided between packages that offer comfortable and familiar experiences, and those that promote new and challenging adventures – between relaxation on the one hand and stimulation on the other. There is also an intermediate category of trips like river cruises, that promise stimulating relaxation on calm waters, with a boat full of people just like ourselves, familiar food and comfortable surroundings, gliding at a safe distance through an exotic Disneylandscape full of carefully selected foreigners, some of whom may be persuaded to pose for souvenir selfies. This is obviously the best of both worlds.
There are many exotic landscapes that I haven’t seen yet. But I know that the travel industry has been there ahead of me, preparing for me as it were. Every attractive locale has been touristified to the maximum. No island is too isolated, no culture is too peculiar, no activity is too bizarre to be promoted as a unique travel experience. There is not a remote tribe or an endangered species that doesn’t have its own group of tourists, cameras poised to record the unique moment. The exotic has become the mundane – bungee jumping in the Sahara, surfing in Antarctica. When everyone it seems has walked on the Great Wall of China or herded wild guinea pigs in Peru, it is very hard to find something different on a small planet.
This year the choice is complicated by concerns about the airline industry, crazy international politics, unpredictable travel restrictions, and of course climate change. Last year’s sunny paradise may be an intolerable oven this year, or possibly underwater.
Serious and thoughtful people say that the only true escape is inward, the kind that must be sought through meditation, or fine music, or a good book. They may be right, but the temptation to see new worlds and new civilizations is always there, even though commonsense may tell us that there really is nothing new under the sun. Your next escape may be the big one.
