Going places - closer to home
The woods were silent except for the sound of our boots sinking into mucky paths covered with fallen tan and gray leaves. A heavy fog surrounded us on our way here. The air was warmer than the week before. Not yet actually warm, but still a tease of spring. We were there early, before most other hikers and dogwalkers. We heard occasional trills of birdsong. New layers of lime-green moss spread over silver-brown stones and spilled out of decaying oak stumps. As the path dropped down closer to the water, we heard the roar of it before seeing it. And then a much louder symphony of frogs called out to each other for long minutes, abruptly stopping periodically, creating a presence of quiet. Unending winter rains had raised the river levels so much that some weeks the nearby trails were impassible. This week we were able to get all the way to the confluence of Rocky River and the Deep River.
The thinnest cotton wisp of cloud hung over the water’s expanse. Where grasses usually stood several feet tall at the rivers’ meeting point, today there was only water rushing over the top of them. Earlier in the fall, from this very spot, we had seen a muskrat swim from the grassland island towards our shore as he was evidently fishing for his lunch. This half way point on our usual hike is my heart’s true destination here at the North Carolina Nature Conservancy’s White Pines Nature Preserve. Here I feel the energy of the two rivers meeting. The Rocky River flows into the Deep River. The Deep River continues onward to merge with the Haw River, and eventually feeds into the Cape Fear and onward to the Atlantic Ocean.
Travel restrictions during the pandemic created the necessity for my husband and I to look close to home for places to explore--and White Pines has become a frequent destination. It is located about 25 minutes away from our house. The Nature Conservancy kept their spaces open while the state parks were closed. This preserve is located in the opposite direction of places where we usually go hiking. Finding it has been a treasure to us, our Sunday morning sanctuary from the crazy covid world. We have seen three seasons now and delight in how our familiarity with this place now allows us to notice subtle changes in what the natural world is up to in those woods--the blooming of flowers, leaves turning colors and falling away, and the rise and fall and speed of the river waters.
Driving for half an hour, even to somewhere this lush and divine, usually does not count as a travel experience. We think travel is getting far away from home and being far away will remove us from boredom or stress. We believe we can find something more interesting, more relaxing away from home, and the further away, the more interesting, the more relaxing. After a year of staying closer to home, however, I have begun questioning my assumptions about where and why I want to travel. Yes, travel can broaden one’s understanding of the world. I can speak from work travel experience. But I can also tell you that there is benefit in learning to love where you are. To go deeper to see what is around you, what you don’t have to/aren’t able to pay attention to if you are always focused on somewhere faraway. Slowing down the pace changes the goal of travel as well, from a consumption mindset to one that perhaps has more purpose, less stress.
The benefits of exploring places closer to home include not only spending less time and money on leisure activities but also playing a part in strengthening local economies and communities, keeping money circulating closer to home. We often use ‘stress reduction’ as a rationale for travel, but in truth, travel creates more, including the need to work more to be able to afford to go further distances. It seems so simple and obvious but it took slowing down a bit for me to see it. I have reframed the idea of local travel, local vacations as a way to care for myself and my neighbors. I’m not going to give it all up--certainly traveling to see our loved ones will be a much-anticipated pleasure for those of us who have not seen family and friends during the pandemic. But I have found a new awareness of the personal and environmental costs of some kinds of travel and a need to be thoughtful about where and how I travel. Shortening the distances I travel or the frequency with which I find myself away from home, brings me closer to my community and calls me to care about them more as I seek out the pleasures of what is closer to home.
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Some of my recent thinking about travel was informed and inspired by the following podcast episodes. If you have similar concerns or are just curious to learn more, you might want to check them out.
Natale Nahai: SUSTAINABILITY, TRAVEL & THE POWER OF BUSINESS TO DRIVE CHANGE
Everybody Now: A PodBoom -- The Climate and Ecological Emergency
Accidental Gods: BREAKING THE AUSTERITY MYTH: THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN – BUT WE CAN MEND IT