As we head into the summer, thoughts (or at least my thoughts) often turn to travel. Last year, we took a fabulous trip to Rome and Croatia. While in Croatia, we spent a week sailing the Aegean Sea, visiting large towns, like Hvar and Korcula but also several smaller ones like Sucuraj.
Mark Twain once wrote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
I happen to agree with Twain, but I also have a more selfish view of the benefits of travel. Travel isn’t just about killing prejudice or bigotry or even about opening one’s views. I happen to think it’s also one of the most powerful instigators of awe and wonder, feelings too little valued or encouraged in this day and age.
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a writer or if it’s just part of my make-up (or both since being a writer is part of my make-up), but there is a magic to exploring somewhere new (or newly exploring somewhere familiar) that can, in rare, quiet moments of the soul, be breathtaking. I’m not talking about the majesty of a castle or a world wonder. I’m referring to the little things, the tiny moments that make you wonder about who, what, and why. And even if we never learn the answers to those questions, as we often don’t, just simply asking them has a way of connecting us—perhaps to others, but certainly to our own imagination and creativity.
On our second night in Croatia, we docked at a small town that had maybe a handful of restaurants. After dinner, the kids went back to the boat to drink coke and play cards and my husband and I walked around town. We wound our way through tiny alleys as we walked up a few hills and down again. We past empty lots and houses hundreds of years old—houses untouched by the war of two decades ago.
After walking for about thirty minutes, we came around a corner and I was quite taken with a small balcony that appeared romantically medieval. I was snapping a few pictures the sounds of a little boy caught my attention. We both turned around to see this church. So small and unassuming, it’s possible we might have walked right by it had it not been for the family that had stopped to eat their ice cream and play in the (very) small cobblestone area before the entrance.
In size, it was probably no bigger than twenty feet across and in all honesty, I’m not even sure how it could have been used for any service attended by more than ten or twelve people. But what really caught my attention was the orchid. Can you see it? At first, I wasn’t sure what it was, but as I zoomed my lens in, it became clear that a single, white orchid had been placed in the darkened window.
Who placed it there? When? And Why? Was there a nun in charge of ensuring the visible flower stayed in bloom? Did the flower, or the fact that it was a white orchid, have a meaning? Was it even real?
I know it probably seems strange, but a year later, I still think about this orchid. I still wonder if it had a meaning, if it was there for a reason, or if maybe, I’m just over thinking it. And this is why I love to travel—while I adore all the flowers in my own garden, I can honestly say that I don’t find myself thinking about them at odd hours of the day. I don’t find myself building stories around them, or wondering if they are still there. But I do think about that orchid and on some of my quieter nights I can feel the whispers of a story beginning to vibrate softly in my mind—not yet strong enough to have its own voice.
But I think it will one day. I don’t know what that story will be or when it will come to me but the curiosity and wonder sparked by that single flower in a church window thousands of miles from home isn’t something that will stay silent forever.
And that is why I love to travel, whether near or far from home—because when we’re open to the subtlies of real life, it can open our eyes, and our minds to endless wonder.