Is Travel Good For The Soul?

Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones Deck prompts — Where have you traveled? It can be to Timbuktu or the 7-Eleven on the corner. Don't limit yourself to distant travel. The park on the corner has vast possibilities. Go, write - begin with ten minutes.

I lived in a neighborhood with a 7-Eleven when young and visited it often, both for gas and for groceries/snacks. Not the best place to get groceries but that is where many people went that didn't have a vehicle. It is called poverty. No regular grocery stores available within walking distance.

The only Timbuktu or close to it that I am aware of is the music group Timbuk three, who are on YouTube and they plays a song titled Two Medicines that I recommend.

I travelled to visit family all of the time growing up. My mother thought it was important to know all my family, even after my dad died she would take us to his family. Family was important and because of that I got to know all of my cousins and other family.

When I married, my husband was hired as an over the road truck driver. I learned to drive an 18-wheeler and went with him for a couple years until our children were born. I saw a lot of the country in a truck. Lots of large highways and a small amount of the cities he hauled to.

Once our daughter was born, travel came to a halt, although we did go along once she could handle it, for a time or two. I remember we got stranded at a truck stop in New York. Luckily there was a motel close by. It was due to roads being closed because of snow.

My husband knew he could get through but he figured there were cars blocking the roads that couldn't get through. My memory was of going to a bar without my husband that was close by. I ordered a bloody Mary to drink and they didn't know what I was talking about.

I had been a bartender prior to this trip and taught that bartender both drinks with beer and then with Vodka. In all my trips with the husband there was never a place I wished to return to. To this day, I prefer to go places that family/friends are.

I have been to Mazatlan Mexico and boarder towns, a boarder town in Canada, most of the states in the United States for work, to visit family, or to take a family trip.

Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones Deck prompts — The exotic is not always the best writing material - it can be too foreign to know what to say about it. Writing does not ask us to be sophisticated, only to know what we know - but often not knowing it until we write. Writing itself is the act of discovery; it brings us close to wherever we have traveled, near or far, inside or out.

Travel is something I really have little interest in. I want to spend time with family and friends. I think about going to New Mexico, Texas and Michigan where family live. Somehow those places feel like going to another country.

This year I was in Texas for a wedding. It was 100 degrees most of our time there. Thankfully there was air conditioning everywhere we were.

Last year my kids took me to North Carolina for my 70th birthday. That was great! So much fun time spent with my three children.

In between I took a few trips to the BWCA, to other family and friends right here in Minnesota. Then travel for the training spots I was involved in northern Minnesota. Nine within the last years time and a few other work obligations.

I have plans to slow it down for a while. I have a book to write. There will still be some travel with the interviews for the book. Hoping to keep those interviews fairly local. Maybe within a couple hours drive.

So, my question being is travel good for the soul? As I have aged, I want to stay closer to home, sleep in my own bed, eat my own food, and spend time with my husband laughing.

I can still laugh, and spending time with friends that are trainers that I work with is fun, or I probably wouldn't still agree to do it. All of this is feeding my soul.

I guess it is just that I am slowing down and miss the comforts of home when I am on the road. It is more work now to travel. Even when younger, the travel was always missing the comforts of home, but it didn't feel as much like work as it does now.