Chaosbutterfly

I’ve been watching all the news from Iceland and Europe and I have a few things to say about the availability of easy travel.  I love travel, I really do, but I have to say I’ve seen what toll it has taken on our social structure and our environment.  I see this volcano problem as perhaps a chance for us to look at our reliance on aircraft and how it’s fundamentally changed our lives.

My family arrived here in America 300 years ago on a sailing ship and they never went back.  They never visited home, they possibly wrote letters, but they essentially were forever cut off from the old country.  It was very much a one way trip.  No looking back.  Now days it’s a very different story for most people who make the trip abroad.  You can fly back for the holidays, you can talk on the phone.  You never really know what it is like to truly make the long walk from all that you have ever known to live somewhere new and scary and different.

You can look at it as a way to cut carbon.  However, I am sure that the volcano is pumping out more than enough ash to make up for all the carbon we have saved by not flying.  Sometimes we just need to relax and take what life gives us.   Sorry your fresh bananas will not make it to London.  Sorry you can’t make your weddings and business meetings.  Sorry that you have to sit at home and due with a net-meeting.  But think of it as did you really need to go there?  Does a call really accomplish the same thing?

I know, I can say this so easily since I’m going nowhere and the only travel I have planned will be by car.  But there is a very big difference between casually touring and real voyaging with thought and meaning.   If you go somewhere as a tourist, be mindful of the impact you have on the places you visit.  Realize that real people live here and make their livings there.  Not all Paradises are really what they seem.  Slow down and see the paradise at home.