Those of us who love to travel look forward to seeing new landscapes, whether they are natural, rural or urban. Some, including myself, also focus on the geology, hydrology, topography and ecology of those landscapes and often enjoy the journey as much as the destination. We thus usually volunteer to drive and are not apt to sleep or read during road trips, unwilling to miss any interesting or unexpected sights along the way.
So I was especially disappointed this morning when our route through the southern half of Mississippi, a State in which I have spent little time, was enveloped in a pea-soup fog; for much of that segment, I saw little more than the tail lights and pavement ahead of me and, at times, the trees that lined the highway. It was like sitting in the middle seat of an airliner when the window occupant decides to close the shade (a practice that I personally despise). When one is blind to the journey, the act of travel looses its perspective.
Teens and young adults seem to have little interest in the experience of travel, focused as they are on their smart phones or GPS devices and generally oblivious to the environment through which they move. Perhaps, in the distant future, when humans are transported to other locations instantaneously, the joys of travel will be lost altogether. Unfortunately, while new technologies augment our understanding of the Universe, they tend to diminish our ties to the natural world.
