My partner Yancey and I are just home from ten days in Ireland. It’s a belated 30-year anniversary trip, an empty nest celebration, and part of a new season in our lives. We couldn’t have had a better time, and I’ll be writing about it here for a couple weeks.
One of my pet peeves is when people say things like, “We did Ireland.” Oh my goodness. Take any spot on the planet—Dublin, Alaska, your vegetable garden, the trail by my house—and the most we can say is that it does US! There are endless details to discover in any square foot if we pay attention, so a ride trip along Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way gives me enough material for a lifetime.
What I’ve come to understand about myself is that I need to put my body in a different place. Every 6-8 weeks I need to take a trip to Seattle, try a new trail, find a new swim spot. And a few times a year, I need to be in completely different surroundings. It doesn’t need to be an international trip (though that’s usually most immersive), but without it, something in me starts to stagnate.
At the busy airport last night, I marveled that, even in the age of virtual connection and AI, people still feel the need to put their bodies in different places. They pack stuff, get passports updated, book flights, endure jet lag, spend money, and risk disappointment to leave what’s familiar. I’ve learned a tiny bit about indigenous people’s discovery of remote South Pacific Islands. Ancient navigators, happy and settled on their home islands, nevertheless felt the call to set out for the unknown. It wasn’t for conquest, but for curiosity and longing.
The urges to leave home and return again are ancient and trustworthy. And without at least some proximation of this movement, this tidal exchange, we can become less prone to awe and wonder. We can fixate on all the things in our lives we can’t control and begin the optimization spiral. We can start to rely on the dopamine hits of shopping, drinking, smoking, watching, scrolling, becoming bored in a sensuous world that is waiting to be discovered.
I don’t really like travel planning. I put off decisions till the last minute, I outsource a lot to my amazing partner, and it’s hard to clear space in my life. Getting away for this trip meant a lot more work before and after. I felt like I had to be “elbows out,” keeping these two weeks free. And I even felt a little guilty about it, telling clients to wait, patching things together for the dog, spending money that’s also needed for house repairs and college payments.
But you can guess what my conclusion is—not only worth it, but absolutely essential. Putting my body in a different place forces me to break habits, see with new eyes, wake up. Elizabeth Barrett Browning says, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes.” The Celtic priestesses would agree—we don’t need temples to find the divine. Every bush is a burning bush. We just need to find a way to notice. And maybe take off our shoes.