Even when thousands of miles away, you can feel as if you are only a few miles away from home. During this trip I have found myself in unfamiliar territory many times, in places that I hadn’t even done much prior research on. A few others I had been to once or more before and I knew what to expect. No matter where I was, near or far, I always found something that made it feel like home. You can been thousands of miles away from familiar territory, but since the world is so integrated it can feel like you are right next door.
I was born on the west coast, and although I currently situate myself in Missouri I have found myself traveling to the Wild West many times, and it feels familiar to me. The East coast, notably the New England coast, has always been a whole new bird. Strange and different from the warm waters of the Pacific. It was in this strange land that I had ventured yesterday, and found myself gazing upon the waters in this morning.
It turns out that as many differences that the West coast and the East coast have, there are still some simliarities. What? Well the answer is perhaps so simple that it seems ridiculous to state it, but they are both coastal environments. They both offer that same salty air serenity that many of us crave as a vital piece to our mental well being. The sound of the waves crashing, the feel of the ocean spray in the air. Thousands of miles away from the golden coast and I felt like I was in the same place, especially as the sun was shining on a warm Spring day.
As I traveled west towards my destination for the night, a relative’s home in the country of upstate New York, I saw many things that made me feel like even less space was between I and my home. Many of the trees were similar to those of the midwest, agriculture dotted the land (although much sparser than that of the midwest), and road-kill deer littered the sides of the road. When I reached Lake Champlain it was flooded, much like the flooding of the midwest right now. Homes sat in a couple feet of water and fields looked like lakes, the water only a foot from the railways and roadbed. Was I really halfway across the continent?
The differences were certainly more noticeable. The mountains were much taller, animal Xing signs warned not only of deer, but also moose and bear, roadway outcrops had more igneous and metamorphic rocks than sedimentary. Gas stations and restaurants of unfamiliar names appeared on highway signs and of what agriculture I did see it was predominantly livestock as opposed to crops. I was certainly in a different place, so why did I feel so close to home?
I think sometimes we spend so much time looking at the differences that we miss out on the similarities. We point out the items that stick out like a sore thumb to what we are accustomed to, focusing on them. We forget to acknowledge that all of these places, or people in some cases, are of the same world, same universe, and even the same matter. While travel is usually directed towards finding something different, perhaps we should also consider what is the same. I think our world would be a much better place if we all realized that every place, and every person, has something in common with another. Next door or thousands of miles away, our lives are intricately woven together in this universe.
What we do today can have effects on others for years to come. Whether it be an action, a voiced opinion, or a product of our creative mind, we all have an input on the way the world revolves. Each of us has a part to play in this small world, each of us our strengths and weakensses. It is up to us to determine what role we can play best to contribute. Even though we all have our unique attributes, we are all of the same place- we should never forget that.
-Nicole