This summer, I embarked on a once-in-a-lifetime type of trip - I spent several weeks seeing some of the most beautiful sights that my freshly twenty-three-year-old eyes have ever beheld. It was the kind of trip that made it hard to return to “normal life” afterward. The kind where you come home sunburned and stinky, with scratched-up knuckles, stray hangnails, and shoes covered in a neat veil of warm dirt and sand. I’m well aware I’m not the first young person to travel and feel inspired. And here I am: satiated, starving, thinking, and evidently, writing.
My journey began in Marrakesh, Morocco, where I moved through crowded alleys, turning my back flesh to the walls to account for motorbikes, mules, fellow tourists, and carts carrying assortments of goods for sale. An air-conditioned van moved me to the Agafay Desert and later to the Atlas Mountains where I sweated and blinked back tears as I hiked into the clouds and passed through villages in the Imlil Valley. The communities nestled into the mountains looked like something out of a fairytale, hugged by the trees, with sheep roaming and children laughing. At beaches in Essaouira, Morocco, shoes and socks were stripped to stroll on the sand, kicking back stray soccer balls to small children. Everywhere, I ate the most delicious food of my life: tagines containing chicken and vegetables so tender they could be eaten with a spoon, fresh bread smeared in harissa, and very hot Moroccan mint tea with fresh mint leaves and lots of sugar.
In Milan, Italy, supplied with gas station snacks and coffee, we drove across the country’s width after snapping a picture of the Duomo di Milano from the car. A stop was made in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy to hike the Dolomites, a jagged, rocky mountain range cutting across the northeastern region of the country and apparently a popular tourist destination. I brushed elbows with fellow hikers of all ages speaking various languages - couples, families, and friends who traveled from all over the world to stare up at the most dramatic mountains I’ve ever seen. And stare we did; hundreds of us looking up at rock formations so grand and sublime.
Driving another two hours east landed us in Venice, Italy for the night, where tired legs stumbled over steps straddling the romantic canals. After a cold, quasi-shower in a community bathroom, I joined the other tourists in staring at a sunset, attempting to navigate the ill-lit corridors to find a restaurant not fully booked out with reservations. Aperol Spritz and squid ink spaghetti were eventually consumed before retiring to bed. The next day, we ventured to the island of Sardinia, driving through farmland framed by soft mountains. We sought out Cala Luna, a beach known for its breathtaking cliffsides and striking half-moon caves - and for only being accessible by foot. What I had anticipated being an easy beach day turned into another two-hour trek on uneven terrain, perhaps the most challenging hike of the trip. When I finally made it to the turquoise waters and white pebble beaches, the twisted ankles felt worth it.
My trip ended in Barcelona, Spain, a city that delivered an informal master class in urban planning and architecture. I trudged up to the classic spots - Park Guell, Sagrada Familia, and Antoni Gaudi’s Casa Batlló, Casa Mila, and Casa Vicens - and marveled at the public transportation, parks, and tree-covered avenues. Everywhere, tourists and locals alike reclined and enjoyed their drinks and tapas, as did I. I ended the trip with croquettes, a squid sandwich, churros and chocolate, and a number of other snacks that put the “small bites” scene in lower Manhattan to shame.
My stomach feels full and my legs feel sore. I wish the journey could never end and I also feel my body and mind thanking me for returning to business as usual. As I come down off the high of it all, I’m also remembering the many hours in various states of transience - the many moments of mundanity and bureaucracy between the moments of natural and urban beauty. Moving through places via plane, bus, boat, car, and on foot. Packing and repacking, adapting to accommodations only to pick up and take off again. Long spans of trekking and moving followed by prolonged spells of killing time in airports and on unknown highways.
The act of traveling in any capacity is rather incompatible with the modern human. Driving a car, riding a bike, and flying on an airplane requires passengers to be mostly unplugged, either due to lack of internet connectivity, the need to focus on navigation, as well as the need to be present to actually bear witness to the experience. Most of us have undergone the ordeal of listening to every album or podcast episode downloaded for our flight and having scrolled through our camera roll for the umpteenth time, only to stop and sit with our thoughts because it’s the only thing left to do. Being in transit, time doesn’t freeze, but slows and thickens like taffy - which can feel like a curse disguised as a blessing, a blessing disguised as a curse, and all-around uncomfortable and, at times, intoxicating to a finely conditioned modern human mind. A limbo state, a purgatory, a great release. Life can demand so much speed, how ironic is it that times of stillness are found in metal cylinders in the sky, going hundreds of miles an hour?
And when people actually arrive at their destinations, there is a kind of mindful presence they must demand of themselves to actually take in the sight or experience they are seeking. One must bring their mind back to the present, fighting its attempts to waver to thoughts of work, relationships, and other reminders of “reality.” Do I take pictures, do I not? Am I really seeing this, really understanding its gravity? What more do I need to release to really see it? Mental questions are asked as if you’re just now learning how to use your eyes and ears. Contained, controlled, and patient, traits that don’t always come without ease and discipline.
At the same time, one also can’t help but abandon unnecessary extraneous desires when traveling. When you’re stuck in a car or a plane tarmac for hours on end, there’s no space to fuss over vanity or material desires. You’re stripped down to your primal needs - craving food, water, a place to rest your head, and little else. When you’re climbing up a mountain, hot sun blistering your skin, your brain is only focused on getting to the top, even if it’s just temporary. Having the ability to strip down to these barest of needs, to become this simple-minded is grounding for the human mind, body, and spirit, and a privilege often only available to those with the time and resources to obtain it. So much is required to make things so easy.
As I trudged alongside hikers in the blazing sun and blinked in airport queues amid three-hour flight delays, I thought about the lengths people will go to to see the spectacular. Money, time, and uncertainty are all spent and wagered to have a moment in front of the Mona Lisa or a mountain. To look into the face of something marvelous and perplexing and experience some kind of response, be it wonder, fear, or some kind of shift in perspective.
Staring up at the tallest peak in North Africa and down the rocky valleys of the Dolomites makes one feel both powerful and meager. To think that someone like me, who sits at a computer five to seven days a week and cries and mulls over squiggles on a screen and human-made problems, could somehow exist in the same world, let alone in proximity, to something so splendid, feels embarrassing. Those mountains exist whether I’m looking at them or not and have for hundreds of millions of years. They are real, immovable objects, unlike the weather that dresses them or the hundreds of feelings that pass through me a day. The lengths that people will go to shock themselves with this ice bath of reality, to behold its beauty and to hope it undoes a pattern or two like effective hypnosis. It can feel like an awful lot to bank on, but I can understand why people do it.
After a trip, you often hear the expression of “returning to reality” or “going back to the real world.” I think this sentiment is popular, in part, because of the time-slowing, limbo state of one’s brain during travel, but also because the spectacular days of our lives are considered outliers. The really good and the really bad are considered deviations from an otherwise banal baseline. But the complicated truth is that it’s all life - on top of mountains, at the bottom of dark valleys, and in front of a computer screen staring at the squiggles. Exciting, terrible, and boring - it’s all real and it’s all in flux. As transient as people, vehicles, and attitudes.
Thank you for reading this week’s article, my trip has been the only thing on my mind, so I appreciate you indulging me.
For those unaware, on Friday, September 8, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck the Atlas Mountain region in Morocco, shortly after I left the country. The earthquake has resulted in over 2,000 deaths and counting and has destroyed much of the infrastructure in the villages of the Imlil Valley. To help provide food, blankets, and supplies to those affected, I donated to this fund organized by the High Atlas Foundation and encourage others to do the same and/or share if you’re able to do so. Thank you <3
Sounds like an absolutely amazing trip! As I was reading, I started mentally planning a trip to Marrakesh hahaha.
I really love your ending though, and the part where you started talking about the wondrous beauty of nature, everything you saw and how you couldn't believe that you got to see it. This part really reminded me of the concept of sublime. I'm not sure if you've heard of it or maybe learned about it in a class (it seems like maybe you have?), but the sublime is often used as writing technique in the horror genre to capture the vastness of nature and how witnessing it can make a person feel small and even inconsequential in the midst of it all. It's a topic/style I'm super interested in and inspired by. If you've never read anything with the sublime, I really recommend it!
If you're interested I really recommend the short story "Death by Landscape" by Margaret Atwood. It's one of my absolute favorite short stories and perfectly captures the sublime. Not sure if you like horror, but it's not super scary or anything. Just a little unnerving? I guess? lol it's good! Trust me!
I'm glad you had a lovely summer, Madison. I'd love to go to these places, the pictures look amazing! Thank you for bringing awareness to the earthquake.