The place I'd most like to visit

[kaberett]

This is actually kind of an awkward question to answer, because - well. Because I had the kind of upbringing where I've been to botanical gardens on four continents; I can pick up enough-to-get-by in most Germanic languages (and the majority of Romance ones, if I grit my teeth hard enough) in a matter of hours; and I've hiked in both the European and the New Zealand Alps. I lost a copy of the Thief of Time in Finland. I've lived in Cambridge, London, Switzerland, and LA; I've broken a hammock with an opera singer on Vancouver Island; I've done an overland daytrip to Malaysia and seen Uluru with waterfalls running down its flanks and performed in the Edinburgh Fringe and snorkelled off the Great Barrier Reef, and there's a stretch of the Cornish coastal path where you could show me a photograph taken from anywhere along it and I'd be able to tell you exactly where you were standing.

Which is to say: honestly, I'm kind of exhausted by travelling.

I won't ever tire of watching swallows migrate over snow-covered passes in September, in Austria, where they speak the language of home; or of picking bilberries; or of the way the wind howls around the corner of the house and the heather stands as tall and unbowed as the gorse in Cornwall, but - oh, but I am tired, and what I mostly want is to grow roots, to be home.

I don't regret any of the trips I've made (except for reasons relating solely to the people present), but - but while I'd quite like to see the aurora at some point, that's not really a place I'd like to go. And, really, when it comes down to it, what I want to do is to rest my face on rock and close my eyes and listen to breezes moving through bracken, and this is some of why it feels so strange to be learning to love London (where there - are more stars than in Los Angeles, it's true, and yet-), but - the places I want to go are the ones I can't.

I try not to think too hard about how much I want to spend a year in Antarctica, with wind and quiet and the bright brilliant chill of the cold places, the high places, where the gods live. And I can't, because of my body; and I can't even walk the coast path any more, either, except to the Marconi monument and back, and some things are just a little too hard to look at straight on. But - thank you for asking, because these things (all of them, yes, especially my privilege) are worth acknowledging.

Comments

[swaldman]

I've broken a hammock with an opera singer on Vancouver Island

That sounds....... interesting? :-P

I'm maybe not quite at that "enough" stage myself, but I get what you're saying. Wheras I used to love exploring new places, now I'd quite like to put down roots and build community somewhere.

But... Antarctica, hell yeah.

[pipisafoat]

Intrigued about the broken opera hammock!

I spent a childhood Christmas at Uluru (that made a lot more sense after i fixed it from "as Uluru" to at) and a week or two in Malaysia a few months after that. Sometimes I think of the places I'd like to revisit, since I did 90% of my traveling before the age of 9, and it's too short to even be called a list: I'd like to go back to the Seychelles Islands, but only with the right people (but I don't know who those right people would be). I've seen the aurora, and in theory I'd like to again, but I cannot physically handle that, thanks brain. I loved Rottnest Island, but I'm afraid to see the changes, and I'm afraid to rewrite over treasured memories, because I have precious few of those. (I'd like to revisit Köln and, if I am brave enough, also Siegen, but I don't know if I ever will be brave enough or find the right people available at the same time.)

My wish-list of trips has changed significantly in just the past four years. I no longer care so much about places and instead it's "who do I want to visit?" and "where do they live and/or want to go?" And then it's this: am I physically capable of being part of that trip? Because it is my goal to only vacation when I am reasonably certain the destination itself will not cause a malfunction. (see also: i'll never be a beach person again, and i'm not sure seychelles will ever come true.)

as an aside, I cannot help but gape at people who would like to be in Antarctica or similarly cold places; my fingers start turning blue below 60F! I am content to look at pictures of those places. but it is nice to have people who want to go and take pictures.

[calissa]

I just wanted to say that this entry was quite beautiful. You are doing a great job of pulling your poetry into prose.

I'm not much of a traveller, myself. I have taken firm root in the city of my birth (which some probably think too small to be a true city) and it is most definitely home. In some ways I am lucky to never have had to live anywhere else.

There are people I'd like to see more than places I want to go. And I do wonder very well, marvelling at the clouds and birds and flowers. But I am happy here.