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The Fuel of Travel
How the journey feeds the creative soul
In Spain, the air is hot. I joked with my son who had joined me on the second leg of a trip to this beautiful country, following a week with my wife, that, yes, it was muy caliente. But it was not “Cuba hot.” “That’s a very different hot,” I reminded him. Two years ago he, his brother, and I spent seven days in and around Havana. Not long ago, my wife and I traveled by car along the Oregon coast and then across the state’s mid-section to the lonely and often untouched Oregon interior. These are only the most recent excursions.
In my memoir, The Consequence of Stars, travel plays a large role. It is essentially a character in the stories. In the book, travel is not defined in terms of destinations, but instead by journeys. The “searching” that comes with real travel-not a vacation trip-has for ages fueled the work of writers. I could name dozens. And yes, much of that travel has been found in the stories of those writers-nonfiction, memoir, novels, poetry.
But, I wonder, shouldn’t travel for the creative soul be much more than “material?”
There is energy in place. Every town, city, forest, house, and street has a soul. And yes, a…
