Part of what creates some of this tension in our lives (and I experience this too) is this thought that, that we’re expected (and this is a total lie that we get told our whole lives) that we have to choose between these two things — that we can’t have adventure and home.
— Chloe Cooper Jones
On Thursday, I drove our cat Mystery thirty miles to the veterinary clinic for her annual vaccinations. We don’t have a vet clinic in town, which is strange since so many people here ranch for a living.
Instead, we get to choose between five vets that range between 30-50 miles away (one to the east, two to the west, and two to the north/northeast of us). My dog loves the ladies, so we drive the furthest distance so that he can see two young women vets (Addy and Maddy) who fawn over him.
My cat, on the other hand, wants to get whatever we’re doing over with as soon as possible with the least fuss possible so we go the shortest distance to Conrad, Montana, another small farm and ranch town, where there’s a long-established clinic in operation that sent me a postcard reminding me her rabies vaccination was due.
As an aside, not only are rabies vaccinations required by law by most local municipalities and states, but you’ll also need to get them if you want to bring your pets to Portugal. Fortunately, Portugal does not have quarantine requirements for dogs and cats from the U.S. or Canada. But they do need to be microchipped, vaccinated, and have a health inspection before leaving (more on that in a future edition).
A discussion of easy vs. difficult beauty
Since Doug wasn’t with me (he’s not a fan of podcasts), I decided to listen to Deviate, a travel podcast hosted by Rolf Potts. Rolf is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. It’s become part of the literary canon for backpackers and digital nomads since it was published in 2003. He recently published a companion book to it (which I haven’t read yet, but it’s on the list).
Anyway, this latest episode featured Mr. Pott’s interview with philosopher Chloe Cooper Jones, the author of Easy Beauty: A Memoir, which was a New York Times notable book last year. I’m in the middle of reading it right now and it’s remarkable.
I was immediately captivated by their discussion of easy beauty vs. difficult beauty. Easy beauty being something that takes no effort to appreciate like a rose or a sunset, and difficult beauty being something that takes time and effort to appreciate. Often, as travelers, we are guided to easy beauty destinations. That may be why so many places are over-appreciated and crowded, while others worth appreciating are barely noticed. It seems a strange injustice that we elbow each other out of the way to be in an iconic place and then groan about the crowds, all the while wishing for the authenticity of place that often happens where there is “difficult beauty.”
In the podcast, Ms. Jones recounts a bedtime story her father told her to teach her a lesson about beauty. In it, a little girl asks her father where the most beautiful place in the world is.
“Where is beauty?” she asks. The guide then takes the girl around the world, describing the beautiful places she could see, until finally they end back in the room where the story is being told, where real beauty lives.
Part of the beauty of this story, is discovering that Ms. Jones was born in Bangkok to parents who loved to travel, and was born without a sacrum. As a result she’s much shorter than most women and walks with a distinctive gait. She also has a lot of pain because of her disability.She shares openly in her memoir about how it feels to be pitied and feared in her life for having a disability, and for people to assume that she couldn’t find love or experience a full life because of what she looks like. ‘‘They fail to see the full scope of my humanity,” she says, and then later readily admits that she has dehumanized people and places too. We all do.
Are we numb to the beautiful moments?
“It’s easy to feel (when I travel) like I’m not having an experience of a place as a real and singular and specific person. I’m having the generalized experience. I’m having the appropriate or expected experience,” Ms. Jones says in the podcast.
Yes! I thought. Yes.
This is the experience we’ve all had while we’re waiting our turn to take a photo of the view or the landmark that we flew or drove hundreds of miles to see. The people in front of us standing for their obligatory ten seconds to take a selfie, and then turning to walk down the mountain again while you take your place to do the same.
It’s what it feels like when beauty is a commodity whose value is only earned in bragging rights. “I saw that,” we say on social media when we post a photo. “I was there.”
But were we? Were we really there? Or were we numb to the moment? Entirely ready to move onto the next thing as rapidly as possible. To conquer the next view. To move onto something “more productive.” To walk through another curated experience laid out for us as consumers of beauty.
“Finding the balance between those two experiences is what can make travel so deeply rewarding,” Ms. Jones says. "“A lot of the best travel writers are the ones who have figured out how to move through the world and bring it back from the perspective of one mind, not as people, but as a person.”
The paradox of exposure
Our first attempts to understand difficult beauty will probably start with failure. I failed the first time I tried to appreciate the American Southwest desert.
Not the famous photos of Monument Valley in Utah or the Grand Canyon (those are easy) but the vast stretches of scrub and canyon that seemed to blend into one long pastel painting.
It took me a long time to value desert ecology and archeology. The great fortitude and strength one plant has to survive. The bacteria, lichen and fungi that bind a delicate soil together.
It was the same with prairie grasslands. Acres of sky and wind whipping through places long ago abandoned by most of humanity. How could someone love this?
I found out why, after many visits. My ignorance was cured with plenty of exposure. After studying and learning about the history, the ecology, and the difficult survival mechanisms of the desert and the prairie I finally saw what it is and what it once was.
Paradoxically, even glorious places near and dear to me, like Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks, can dim with hundreds of exposures.
Trips with relatives or friends to show them wildlife, waterfalls, and mountains have made places that people travel from halfway around the globe to see sometimes seem ho-hum, especially as crowds have grown.
“I’m accustomed to this view, I’m bored of it,” my mind says. “Give me something new to appreciate. Give me something easy that will thrill me and then bore me again. Take me away from this place to somewhere new and better.”
Can we be free and be a wanderer and also honor our commitments to the place we call home?
Another tension in the conversation between Mr. Potts and Ms. Jones is the arc of the hero’s journey. Does travel only make sense if you return home? Or can you continue wandering forever?
Another one of my favorite authors, Derek Sivers, is an American expat who lives in New Zealand. He’s called Portugal, the United Kingdom, and many other places home and makes the case in his essays that a life lived over all over the globe can be one of the most mind-expanding paths you can choose.
In his book of essays entitled, How to Live, he offers this advice:
Moving across the world makes you smarter, because you stop thinking you’re always right. Those who shout, “my country is the best!” are those who have never left. In Icelandic, the word for “idiot” means “one who has never left home to journey abroad."
Only idiots think they’re always right. You can’t see your own culture while you’re inside of it. Once you get out and look back, you can see which parts of your personality actually come from your environment.
Traveling makes you better at communicating, since you can’t assume familiarity, and must speak simply and clearly. You’ll get used to speaking with people of different religions, worldviews, and communication styles. You’ll know when to be formal, when to joke, when to reference tradition, and when to swear.
To live a full and rewarding life, intertwine yourself with the world. Move somewhere far away. Plan to stay. Bring no baggage. Leave your expectations and certainties behind.
Ms. Jones is on her own journey to synthesize polar opposites.
“Because I think that’s the only way for me to be authentically present in any of these realms, travel or home, is to have both working together in some sort of way.”
Mr. Potts moved back to his home state of Kansas and settled down there after his travels, which may be why he argues that “the hero’s journey only works if the hero actually comes back and comes home.”
Ms. Jones replies, ‘‘The single self is always in search of a community that it can enrich. It’s an ancient and powerful narrative for a reason, and if you can’t figure out how to come home and give to people I think there would be a feeling of incompleteness for a lot of people.”
Back to the quotidian
Perhaps the most beautiful parts of our lives fall in the routines we have created. The reply to the age old question, “What should we make for dinner?” The making of morning coffee. The reaching over to take a loved one’s hand. Falling back into your own bed after a long trip.
Ultimately, travel and living abroad is about knowing. We want to know how other people “do life.” In my humble opinion, we’re curious. We want to see if we’re missing the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.
Tonight I took Loki for a walk after dark. I could see Orion, the Greek hunter with his bow, and the seven sisters: Electra, Taygete, Maia, Celaeno, Alcyone, Sterope, and Merope shining clearly above. The moon was a bright sliver. The sky crisp and dark around the Milky Way.
I stood in awe of starlight. I was the only person outside in the whole neighborhood (perhaps the whole town) looking up at the sky on a clear cold evening, not really wanting it to end.
Living the beauty of one January moment in one small Montana town.
So, tell me, dear reader, what’s beautiful to you? I’d love to hear about it.
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