Many people usually give me a didn’t-see-that-coming look when I tell them I grew up in Tennessee. I don’t have an accent and don’t like sweet tea, but I am indeed from the South and am very proud of it. I recently went home for a week and thoroughly enjoyed being back near the Smoky Mountains with my family and childhood friends. No matter where I roam around the world or currently reside, Tennessee will always be home.
Besides the Volunteer State being home, it’s hard for me to pinpoint and articulate what exactly it is I like about Tennessee. There is the Southern hospitality which is unparalleled. There is the familiarity of returning to where I grew up. And there is the BBQ and ribs which always has my mouth watering. The view of the mountains is something that I quickly learned that I took for granted when I was living there. Now when I’m absent for months at a time, some things in particular stand out about what makes Tennessee so special when I return to it.
This past trip I was reminded of the whimsical awe and childlike wonderment that summer lightening bugs can stir. It’s a beautiful sight to see a pitch-black field with no one around for miles light up with fireflies. It’s like a myriad of white Christmas lights scattered across the landscape and sparkling to their own rhythm. In the remoteness that one can find themselves in parts of Tennessee, a certain magic of the landscape takes over you. With no major city around, the night sky has its own majesty. Stars blanket the pure blackness and the sky always seems bigger to me from my parents’ backyard. In the silence interrupted only by crickets, I’ve often lost track of time taking in both the fireflies and the Southern night skies. Besides being my home, there is something undeniably magical about the South.
Being father’s day I couldn’t find a better video to share that ties in travel and fatherhood (I didn’t purposefully set out to do this either). A good friend of mine actually shared this video with me a while ago knowing that I’m an avid traveler, but this past week it came up in conversation so I thought I’d share it with you too. It asks “how to stop moving?” The video is Evidence of My Existence from photojournalist Jim Lo Scalzo and is a powerfully visual memoir. He poignantly tells his story about travel as going with beautiful and insightful lines like,
“Travel is a compulsive craving. An addiction. Heroin. The buzz is euphoric and the opportunities are infinite, all open to me as a photographer, the dream job of every wanderlust.”
His travels as an US News & World Report photographer have taken him beyond romanticized travel experiences and some of his pictures are not postcard material. They are moving and heart wrenching. With that said, this film is graphic and has scenes that are disturbing. It’s also beautiful and I highly recommend watching it. I know it made me reflect on going and stopping and my own wanderlust, even if I haven’t been at the forefront of an invasion or to the poorest part of India. Let me know what you think if you watch the video.
Watch the full video here http://www.mediastorm.com/0018.htm or watch it in two parts through these embedded youtube videos (it’s a little over 9 minutes in total):
One of the many wonderful things about travel are the realizations that occur when one is outside of the comforts of your own surroundings. Now that my last extended trip was around 11 months ago, I remind myself of some of my own little epiphanies that I can apply back on my home turf. As complicated as life can seem, sometimes it takes a gentle nudge to get back to the basics from a travel experience.
This coming Friday I’m going home to Tennessee for a week vacation and I couldn’t be more excited about the trip. I’ve already started thinking about what I’m going to pack. My work backpack alone serves as a mobile office with everything from my laptop to chargers for my phones and I even have a portable plug socket. Thinking about my packing list I was reminded of one of my travel insights: the realization of the basic necessities I need to survive. No I really don’t need that wireless mouse to have my life completed.
On my first trip to Europe, my main concerns were what food I was eating that day and where I would be sleeping that night…that’s when the light bulb emerged about survival. When backpacking I think it becomes extremely evident that we need very few tangible objects, especially since your life is lived out of a backpack for an extended amount of time. It’s these realizations from my travels that I like to remind myself now when I’m not traveling or when my current trips are shorter and even related to work. So tonight I am going to bed with the thought that I really don’t need much to live, to pack or to worry about.
