Humans notice change. If we treated all the sensory material we receive equally, we would be too overwhelmed with information to identify what is important. A movement in the landscape can be a threat (if a predator) or an opportunity (if prey). So we learn to notice and pay closer attention to differences.
Familiarity ossifies experience. The things we see around us day in and day out fade out of focus into the background of ordinariness. We stop paying attention to them. We no longer really see them. One of the great benefits of traveling for pleasure, is that it forces us to see everything with new eyes.
When we travel we must recalibrate our instruments of perception. We cannot perceive strange new landscapes with the same eyes with which we half-absently perform our daily chores.
Before a trip into the unknown, I spend a lot of time researching, reading, and otherwise preparing to see it. Some people feel that this spoils the surprise of a new place, takes away the sense of discovery and wonder.
However, for me, envisioning my journey beforehand enables me to deal with all the insignificant aspects of travel, the minor irritations and discomforts, to better focus on the experience at hand. If I have a good feel for the parameters, then I can pay attention to what is most significant. If I don’t do this, then I’m overwhelmed with sensation and not really meaningfully present.
I do not expect the experience to unfold as I’ve imagined it. I simply prepare myself to be unprepared.
GPlus Discussion
Cass Morrison
+1
Mar 8, 2015
Tormod Renberg Lerøy
+1
I usually do a lot of research as well, but sometimes it’s very relaxing to go with the flow.
Mar 9, 2015
M Sinclair Stevens
+5
Over the years I’ve learned that I can feel uneasy when I’m inundated with too much new information, that it takes me time to get my bearings and learn to distinguish the essential from the inessential. To accelerate that process I do two things. I practice using all my gear so that I can access and operate my tools without thinking. Not only do I break in my trekking shoes, I “break in” all my clothes. I practice changing the lenses and batteries on my camera. I move my notebooks, ID, and other necessaries into my backpack the week before, so I become habituated to the various pockets and zips and always know exactly where everything is so that I don’t have to fumble for it in a panic. Practicing beforehand enables me to turn my entire attention to the place.
The second thing I do is read the observations of those who travelled before me. This is what I meant by the “recalibration” of my own perspective, part of learning to see with new eyes. I tend, most of the time, to focus inward. So I often miss things of significance unless they are pointed out to me. I find it more effective to compare and contrast my experience with others than to try to write something clever upon a blank page, with no context for my observations.
Mar 9, 2015
Tormod Renberg Lerøy
+1
This is sound advice. People more spontaneous than us might scoff?
Mar 9, 2015
M Sinclair Stevens
+3
+Tormod Renberg Lerøy I’m not offering my experience as universal truth; I never expect people to be like me. Chiang Yee, the “silent traveller” wrote that he never read any guide book because he wanted to have a pure experience unadulterated by anyone else’s impressions. So, we are complete opposites. And that’s what interests me; discovering that someone can wants something completely different. It blows the Golden Rule. What would make me happy would make him unhappy and vice versa.
Knowing that my desire is peculiar makes me want to explore the whys of it….and that’s what I’ve been doing this week, as I walked three miles in the rain today, concluding that my waterproof isn’t as waterproof as one might hope and that it’s difficult to manage a telephoto lens in pouring rain.
I missed a lot when I travelled in Japan because I didn’t speak Japanese and in that time before the Internet, I was limited to a few printed guide books in English…most of which barely covered the part of the country where I lived.
We once took a long, slow train to Taketa. It’s a very small town in Kyushu and we wandered about, somewhat tired but glad to find a little park…the only green space we’d seen in a long time. Then years later I found out that we had been within a mile of an ancient castle ruin with stunning views of forests all around.
http://www.jcastle.info/castle/profile/79-Oka-Castle
I still feel the disappointment today, 25 years later. These memories are at the root of my motivation.
Mar 9, 2015
Tormod Renberg Lerøy
+3
Hehe 🙂 That is some proper motivation for being a good traveler. I think my only real criteria for enjoying myself when I travel is to not have to be somewhere at some exact time. Unless it is business, I prefer no schedule even if I know where I am going.
Mar 9, 2015
nomad dimitri
+2
+M Sinclair Stevens i too prepare on a cautionary basis before travels. i don’t want to paint the canvas beforehand, not at all, but i want to stretch it, prime it, mount it, carefully, before the first brushstrokes (which are executed by many many hands) touch its surface.
Mar 10, 2015
M Sinclair Stevens
+2
+nomad dimitri I think of it in terms of a picture, too. I want to broadly sketch the outline, to have a sense of it, so that I can fill in the color and detail myself. If I approach a blank canvas, then I only have time to sketch out a rough impression and never time to pay attention to rich details. For this reason, I prefer to reside in a place for a time rather than travel through it. However, in the cases such as this where I’m travelling through, I do the basic prep work beforehand.
To answer a question from another thread here, I have read some essays by Bruce Chatwin in a photo book called Nowhere is a Place but I haven’t got my hands on his more famous In Patagonia yet. Perhaps on my return.
Mar 10, 2015
Mee Ming Wong
+1
+M Sinclair Stevens +nomad dimitri +Tormod Renberg Lerøy This is such a great discussion about your travel styles. Over the years as I learn more about myself, I now have a good idea of what I like to see, how I like to experience it and how long I can take it. I so admire your sense of adventure!
Mar 10, 2015
M Sinclair Stevens’s profile photo
M Sinclair Stevens
+1
+Mee Ming Wong Don’t tease us. Tell. Are you impulsive and go-with-the-flow, or a planner? Or rather (since I rarely think anyone is either/or) some combination of both and for what reasons in what cases?
REPLY
Mar 10, 2015
Mee Ming Wong
+2
+M Sinclair Stevens I am go-with-the-flow. 🙂 People laugh at me about this, but I used to check the postcard stand for sights I might see. Now, once I am there, I will look up online the places I want to visit, dependent on weather and my energy level. But if I were to go on a trek, I would be very prepared. There is a huge difference between preparing for natural elements as compared to artificial ones. As with books, I have accepted, I will not read or see all that I hope.
Mar 10, 2015
nomad dimitri
+1
+M Sinclair Stevens i like his viceroy of quidah, about the slave trade, also turned into a film by werner herzog
Mar 12, 2015
M Sinclair Stevens
+2
Postscript. At the end of the trip, the guides gave each of us a little memento and a joke award title. I got the award for being “Most Prepared”. Well. I’m glad it showed! I proudly wear my badge.
Mar 31, 2015
nomad dimitri
+M Sinclair Stevens what would have been the joke award title that you would have wished the most, had you dared? what about for +Peter Strempel ?
Apr 1, 2015
M Sinclair Stevens
+1
+nomad dimitri Oh, I think that the award was the most appropriate. I can’t think of one better. As I said I’m pleased my efforts showed and amused when I reread these thought I wrote prior to the trip. I admit, however, to be taken aback during goodbyes when one person said to me, “I enjoyed getting to know you.” I had to bite my tongue and smile pleasantly to keep from saying in complete surprise, “Do you think you did?” I felt the entire time that I was invisible. I suppose, being the eccentric that I am, I was conspicuous…but I don’t think I was ever really seen.
Apr 1, 2015
Peter Strempel
+2
+nomad dimitri, I’ve never been travelling with +M Sinclair Stevens, but there was a time when I was known as ‘the scout’ for getting lost and blithely blundering into places that proved to be dangerous and ill advised departures from tourist trails.
Apr 1, 2015
M Sinclair Stevens
+1
+Peter Strempel If I would give you a title, though, I think of you as my spirit guide. I tried to look at the Southern Hemisphere through imagined antipodean eyes…to orient myself to new climes and stars by using your Southern Cross as my compass.
Apr 1, 2015
Peter Strempel
+2
+M Sinclair Stevens
The great Wombat in the sky?
Apr 1, 2015