Halfway through Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck, it is clear that naturalists and more traditional writers have a different focus as they journey through a country. While we naturalists are likely to expound on the landscapes, climate and wildlife, authors such as Mr. Steinbeck are more interested in the people, their culture, their settlements and the nature of their lives.
Indeed, Steinbeck was clearly prone to loneliness, seeking human interaction whenever possible, from the reticent farmers in New England and the Canadian migrant workers in northern Maine to the more garrulous residents of the Midwest. While he has much to say about quaint New England towns, traffic congestion in large cities, the lives of long-haul truckers and the burgeoning mobile home industry, his reference to the landscape is, so far, fleeting and devoid of much detail.
Nevertheless, his travelogue is entertaining, replete with his personal philosophy and reactions to what and who he encounters. After all, though naturalists might prefer travel books by Edwin Way Teale and others, one cannot divorce human nature from our natural environment; indeed, there are few (if any) landscapes where some degree of human impact is not evident.
