Navigating My Identity as a Traveler in Covid Times

On Finch’s spring break, we approached every day like it was a trip bringing that sense of adventure that comes with travel. This was on a stop to Stumptown Coffee on our way to check out the cherry blossoms. Wed’d been here before, but hadn’t ever noticed this awesome mirror setup. It’s the little things, you know.

“Have you traveled much?” 

The question kind of caught me off guard. It was from someone who I had recently gotten to know. Someone whose knowledge of me existed in the realm of a pandemic and parenting. I can’t remember how it came up, but it felt strange to be asked that question because pre-pandemic, a solid part of my identity included “traveler.” Anyone who knew me even for a short time knew that I was, at any given point, planning a trip if not having just come back from one, usually to some far flung locale. The question shocked me because amidst a couple years of paused travel planning to said far flung places, I hadn’t realized that this “traveler” identity had receded a bit to the background. It never left me, per se, it just didn’t seem as apparent, I suppose.

Despite my shock, I think I mustered an answer where I listed off a few international places I had been. But after the conversation, I reflected a bit more about my reaction, and also what the identity of the traveler actually is. 

I used to tell people that if I stay put for too long, I start getting “ants in my pants” that urges me to start planning the next travel adventure. Early in the pandemic, knowing that travel wouldn’t be happening any time soon, those ants were noisy little buggers driving me to watch any travel show I could get my hands on. I found myself crying at a scene in the Chef’s Table episode of the charismatic and charming Italian butcher, Dario Cecchini, where he cheerfully toasted with his guests around a communal table in his restaurant, Panzano. I wanted so badly to be at that table, so close to the stranger-no-longer next to me that their wine spills a little bit on my plate from the vigor of their cheersing. It was a scene–the eating of good food communing with new people–that expressed what I loved about travel. And being so early in the pandemic when the “certainty of uncertainty” hadn’t yet settled in, it was heartbreaking to know that we didn’t know when we’d be doing any of that with anyone at our own homes let alone in remote places.

But as the pandemic wore on and we settled into our routines and the “certainty of uncertainty” became the new normal, something began to shift around my perspective of what it means to travel. It was a gradual shift, so I don’t think I noticed it in the moment, rather it happened in my attempts at staying active and engaged in the world when there was still the imminent risk of Covid exposure pre-vaccine. It started in summer of 2020 when the weather was beckoning us to be outside and our pre-Covid regular activities were off the table. On my one weekday home with Finch, we’d explore something new–beaches or hiking trails or farms that we had never been to. Each Monday with him was a new adventure that began to expand my own views of this incredibly beautiful region. Like in any place, we get stuck in our routines and this was a strange moment out of that.

I approached each week's activity as a challenge. I’d go to places I’d often heard of, but never taken the time to figure out what it was or how to get there. For example, on an outing to pick berries at a farm on Sauvie Island, an island agricultural community just north of Portland, I spontaneously decided to drive up to beaches on the northeastern side of the island. We got to wade in the deliciously cool water, watch the boats making their way down the Willamette River, and chomp on the freshly picked berries as waves lapped our feet. We made our way to a riverside beach on the Sandy River where Finch spent a couple hours pretending to drive a boat. 

I realized about halfway through the summer that I was getting exactly what I got out of my favorite travel experiences: discovery, spontaneity, and the general feeling of “being away.” And these were all trips between 20 and 60 minutes from my own home. 

Throughout the next year, we started to sprinkle in little family outings a bit farther out of that 60 minute distance. We spent extended weekends at the Oregon Coast and several weekends staying in the farther reaches of the Columbia River Gorge. I spent my birthday in the wine country around Yakima, Washington with one of my oldest friends. These were places very familiar, in theory, to me in that I had either passed through them or even stayed there at some point in my life growing up and going to college in the Pacific Northwest. But had rarely ever experienced them in depth.

I found through these closer-to-home jaunts that I was actually shaking out those wanderlust-feeding ants in my pants even though I didn’t know it. At the same time, it gave me an even deeper closeness to the place I live (see this past blog post). While it may not look on the outside that I’m the traveler that I was pre-pandemic (or even pre-kid), but on the inside, it seems I’ve continued to maintain that traveler identity despite it all.*

We’ve since started to take a couple of domestic, short-distance plane rides. And now as things ease up and our kid is nearly fully vaxxed, we’re starting to look at those longer distances, even international trips. As we do, I think something has changed in me about what it means to be a “traveler.” I’ve realized it’s not about the far flung locales. It’s not about the “grand” adventures. It’s not about epic vacations. Travel can certainly be all those things. Rather it’s in the little things, the small details that help make that travel experience something new. It’s the conversations with a stranger at a bar (or at an outdoor table if we’re talking pandemic travel), it’s noticing a rainbow in the distance, it’s relishing an incredibly delicious ice cream cone on a hot summer day. These moments don’t have to be experienced “elsewhere.” The “elsewhere” can definitely make them feel more novel, but we can find that novelty in the place just down the block. In fact, during Finch’s recent spring break, I approached the week as if we were finding fun adventures (both new and familiar to us) throughout the week to tap into that travel feeling.

For all the awfulness that Covid threw at us these past couple years, at the very least the forced travel pause has made me truly, truly appreciate the places that are very, very close to my home. And stay true to the storytelling focus of these blog posts, being forced to stay close to home has, at the very least, helped me create a new narrative of what travel is and could be.

*It’s funny writing this now because honestly that was something that plagued me when Finch was a baby–that question “am I losing my traveler identity now that I have a kid”–and what prompted me to convince Cory to travel with me to Argentina when Finch would be 11 months old…that’s a whoooole other story.