{"id":2119,"date":"2016-08-15T23:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T23:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/index.php\/2016\/08\/15\/the-language-of-travel\/"},"modified":"2023-08-18T20:01:17","modified_gmt":"2023-08-18T20:01:17","slug":"the-language-of-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/2016\/08\/15\/the-language-of-travel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Language of Travel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A conversation is underway. Eleven of us have begun gathering once a week to share thoughts on travel and travel writing. Why? Perhaps it is the word itself. <\/span>Travel<\/span><\/i>…six-letters flowing like melted French brie across two syllables. <\/span>Travel<\/span><\/i>…a variant of <\/span>travail<\/span><\/i> meaning a sense of toil and fatigue. <\/span>Travel<\/span><\/i>. A word filled with a passionate language of its own.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The word travel is both a verb and a noun. My dictionary, as if impatient to get going, begins with the verb travel–to go from one place to another; journey: <\/span>She is traveling in Europe this summer. He travels fastest who travels alone<\/span><\/i> (Rudyard Kipling); to move, proceed, pass: <\/span>Light and sound travel in waves<\/span><\/i>; to walk or run: <\/span>A deer travels far and fast when chased<\/span><\/i>; to pass through or over; <\/span>to travel a road<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then, like a seasoned traveler, my worldly multi-lingual lexicon introduces the noun travel–the act or fact of going in trains, ships, cars, and the like, from one place to another; journeying; <\/span>to spend a summer in travel.<\/span><\/i> She loves travel.<\/span><\/i> (Indeed! I agree.) Travels–journeys: <\/span>Soon after, we find him on his travels in Italy<\/span><\/i> (Samuel Taylor Coleridge.) Travels–a book about one’s experiences, visits, or observations while traveling: <\/span>We possess the travels of a native of India in the fourth century<\/span><\/i> (Mountstuart Elphinstone).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The various meanings of the word travel anticipate our conversation. Parsing its meanings in my dictionary, words jump off the page. <\/span>Journey, Europe, summer, Kipling, Coleridge, India, Italy, alone, light, waves, far and a fast, pass through, love, experiences, visits, observations, the fourth century. <\/span><\/i>Like countless travelers over the centuries who have kept journals, woven travel tales and left their footprints in the sands of distant deserts or carved into sandstone, I too could write my own travel stories with these words.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Months ago, I talked with Lucille Salerno–the indefatigable and creative Director of the University of Missouri Extension’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute–about teaching another class on travel writing, expanding on one I had offered for the first time a year earlier. As my enthusiasm for such a class grew, I began to complete an annotated list of travel writing from the library that surrounds me in my studio at Boomerang Creek. An innocent task at first, my list has become a monumental journey of its own. Mark Twain’s <\/span>Innocents Abroad <\/span><\/i>is one among a host of other well known writers, along with a few forgotten ones, who felt the need to capture<\/span> light, waves, experiences, observations<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>love<\/span><\/i> as they passed through or over worlds either alone or with other fellow travelers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the first day of class, our group took turns reading aloud a short travel article by master storyteller Pat Conroy. “In the last days I would ever feel like a young man,” Conroy wrote, “I went to Paris to finish the novel I was writing at the time.” After going into an “uncontrollable rapture” reading Ernest Hemingway’s <\/span>A Moveable Feast<\/span><\/i>, Conroy reveals, “I could think of no finer way to spend a part of my life than by writing a book in the storied, uncapturable city of literature and light.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Just hearing the word Paris through Conroy’s writer’s voice was an intoxicating invitation to travel. Riveted, we listened to Conroy’s delicious language of travel as it continued to work its magic on us all. As each person in our circle read a passage aloud, images of Paris entered our heads. Gamely, we tackled the pronunciation of French words, hoping not to sound like a donkey (Conroy’s own assessment of his French that summer).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Our senses were stirred at the mention of <\/span>croissants, brioche<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>escargots, the Seine, the Louve, the Rue Mouffetard, Les Deux Magots, Sartre<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Beauvoir<\/span><\/i>. But it was Conroy’s description of a picnic lunch with friends–two cheeses, <\/span>Chaource and Camembert, hard sausage, duck pate’, a baguette and a bottle of Rose’d’Anjou<\/span><\/i>–that drew a collective sigh. Without a single reservation, our travels had already begun.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

–Cathy Salter, September 2011
\n<\/span><\/i><\/sup>Published in Notes from Boomerang Creek,<\/strong> <\/a>a collection of personal essays<\/sup> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Back to Writing Tips<\/a><\/p>\n

Continue Module 6, The Essay:\u00a0 Structure the essay for the reader to Understand the Unfamiliar<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A conversation is underway. Eleven of us have begun gathering once a week to share thoughts on travel and travel writing. Why? Perhaps it is the word itself. Travel…six-letters flowing like melted French brie across two syllables. Travel…a variant of travail meaning a sense of toil and fatigue. Travel. A word filled with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[371,4,383],"tags":[89,90,92,93],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2992,"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions\/2992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldsobright.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}