Some of you heard
me give a talk entitled “The Geography of Somewhere” at the
first Civic Tourism conference, in Prescott, Arizona, two years
ago, and others may have read the talk online or in Dan
Shilling’s book, where it serves as an introduction. At the risk
of repeating myself, I’m going to begin by recounting the major
points of that talk, for I wish to build on them here.
I raised some
eyebrows in Prescott by saying that I believe “Americans gad
about too much. Our ceaseless mobility burns up the earth’s
dwindling supply of petroleum, destabilizes the climate,
enslaves us to tyrannical regimes in the Middle East, embroils
us in war, buries more and more of our landscape under pavement,
and shatters our communities. No person concerned about the fate
of our planet and the welfare of our descendants should
encourage any more idle movement.”
“Too often,” I
said, “the kind of travel we call tourism is only another form
of shopping, treating the whole country as a gigantic mall
offering trinkets and distractions for sale. Too often, it is
driven by a yen for golfing or gambling, a craving for novelty
or scenery, or by simple boredom. If we’re going to rove about
the continent, burning up oil and jeopardizing our
grandchildren’s future, we ought to be prompted by larger
motives.”
I went on to say
what I thought those larger motives might be, by comparing
“Travel at its best” to “a kind of vision quest, in which we
journey away from the familiar world to encounter some alien
setting, some natural or cultural or spiritual presence that
enlarges our understanding, and then we journey home to act out
that larger vision in our households, neighborhoods, towns, and
cities. As in a mythic quest, what begins as a private search
ends up enhancing the life of the tribe.”
I suggested that
the travelers’ understanding is most enriched through an
encounter with a distinctive, coherent, and powerful sense of
place—a place that defies the homogenizing influences of box
stores, strip malls, franchises, cookie-cutter suburbs,
tyrannical highways, and vapid mass media. Then I outlined some
of the qualities that give certain places a feeling of character
and charisma, making them worthy of a visitor’s deep engagement
and of a citizen’s love. Here’s an abbreviated list of those
qualities:
-
A real place
feels as though it belongs where it is, as though it has
grown there, shaped by weather and geography, rather than
being imported from elsewhere and set down arbitrarily like
a mail-order kit. The connection to geography shows up in
building materials, for example, as well as in architecture
and food.
-
A real place
is distinguished by a vigorous local economy, one that draws
on resources from the region and on the skills of its own
citizens. Key enterprises, from factories to coffee shops,
reflect the taste and judgment of the local people who own
them, rather than the dictates of distant corporations.
Dollars spent in such a community circulate there for a
spell, instead of being immediately whisked away to some
remote headquarters.
-
Visitors know
they have arrived in a cherished place when artists choose
not merely to live there but to photograph and paint it, to
write and sing of it; when archaeologists and historians
delve into its past; when naturalists keep track of the
local flora and fauna; and when elders pass on all of this
lore to the young.
-
A real place
conveys a sense of temporal depth, a sense that people have
been living and laboring here for a long time. The traces of
earlier generations are preserved in festivals and folkways
and habits of speech; in old buildings that have been
restored and kept in service; in landscapes that are still
devoted to traditional uses such as orchards, dairies, and
woodlots. Such a place is alive and changing, like any
organism, gaining and losing residents, tearing down and
building up. Yet there is continuity amid the change. The
presence of history, good and bad, not only enriches our
experience of place, it also reminds us that we who are
alive now suffer as well as benefit from the actions of our
ancestors, and that our actions, in turn, will affect those
who come after us.
-
A real place
keeps us mindful of nature, as it keeps us mindful of
history. In the built environment one feels the presence of
the living environment—in parks, gardens, bike and
pedestrian trails, river corridors, beaches, urban forests,
and yards given over to native plants, and in all the
creatures, from crows to coyotes, that share the place with
our two-legged kind.
-
Just as we
relish the presence of nature, so, in real places, we
delight in the company of other people. A vital community
provides many public gathering spots, from auditoriums and
farmers’ markets and cafes to playgrounds and plazas and
parks, where people are free to mix with neighbors and
strangers; the more diverse the mixture, the more
illuminating the experience is likely to be. In a truly
democratic gathering space, people from all walks of life
may argue and swap stories and admire one another’s babies
and sympathize with one another’s aches, all the while
feeling at home. The true wealth of a community shows up not
in the grandeur of private residences or fancy stores but in
the quality of libraries, schools, museums, parks,
courthouses, galleries, and other public arenas.
-
Alluring
places invite us to immerse ourselves, to open all our
senses. We encounter such places not by gazing through
windshields or by gaping at screens but by walking.
Sidewalks become more important than streets, parks more
important than parking lots, legs more important than
wheels. On foot, we experience the world in three
dimensions; we move at a speed that allows us to absorb and
savor and reflect.
I could have described a good many other qualities that
distinguish real places from phony ones. But with this
sampling I hoped to suggest why cities and towns endowed
with a rich, deep, coherent sense of place attract visitors,
and why these visitors might be inspired to nurture similar
qualities back home.
I concluded my
talk in Prescott by saying that the sort of tourism we ought to
encourage would show us how people richly inhabit a place, how
they cooperate, make decisions, solve problems, enjoy one
another’s company, and look after their home ground. It would
renew our appreciation for the security that arises from
neighborliness and mutual aid. It would encourage us to think
about our cities, towns, and countryside as arenas for our
common life, and not merely as patchworks of private property.
It would remind us that we are responsible for the care of our
communities, for the health of the land, and for one another. In
short, such tourism would educate us to become better citizens,
first of our neighborhoods and ultimately of our nation and
planet.
In my Prescott
talk, I never used the word “sustainable,” but in outlining my
vision of civic tourism, I was describing the only form of
tourism that seems likely to be sustainable. To call any kind of
tourism “sustainable” means that we can reasonably imagine it
continuing far into the future without degrading the quality of
life in the place being visited, without exhausting the
visitors’ interest, and without damaging the earth.
How far into the
future should we try to imagine? Businesses often look to the
next fiscal year, or merely to the next quarter; politicians
often look to the next election, or the next press conference;
households often look to the next paycheck; addicts of all
sorts, from alcoholics to recreational shoppers, often look only
to the next fix. By contrast with this short-term thinking, the
Iroquois people of upstate New York instruct their leaders to
look seven generations into the future when making decisions.
Although I admire this instruction, I don’t pretend to be able
to see seven generations ahead. But since I have three
granddaughters—the oldest of them just beginning kindergarten,
the youngest of them not yet a year old—I try to imagine the
span of their lifetime, which, if they’re blessed with good
health and a stable society, should last through this century.
If we try to
envision a form of tourism that might be sustainable for the
next century, what large trends must we bear in mind? The trends
that seem most significant to me, not merely for the future of
tourism but for all human activities, are the end of cheap oil,
the decline in the standard of living for most Americans, and
the degradation of earth as a home for life, especially the
disturbance of the global climate. I will say a few words about
each item on this list, but first let me emphasize that I do not
welcome these gloomy predictions, nor do I speak about them as
any sort of expert. I have merely read the arguments of people
who are experts, and I am convinced that any thoughtful vision
of our future must grapple with the conditions I am sketching
here.
The first of these
trends is the depletion of the world’s supply of oil and natural
gas, even as demand for fossil fuel relentlessly rises. Experts
disagree about exactly when the production of oil and gas from
existing or newly discovered fields will reach a maximum and
begin to decline—some say this moment of so-called “peak oil”
has already occurred, others say it will occur within the next
few decades. But all agree that the decline in production is
inevitable within this century, as the world’s existing fields
are being drained much more rapidly than new fields are being
discovered. (The global discovery of new deposits peaked in the
1960s, and has been declining ever since, averaging only 10-50%
of the annual use.) The decline in supply will coincide with the
increasing clamor for oil from rapidly industrializing economies
in Asia and South America. Moreover, the remaining oil will be
much more expensive to extract, ship, and refine than the more
easily accessible deposits that we have already burned.
The result of
these trends will be an inexorable rise in the cost of oil and
gas, and of everything made from or powered by oil and gas.
While the prices of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil,
plastics, artificial fertilizers, pharmaceuticals and other
petroleum byproducts will oscillate up and down with the
vicissitudes of the marketplace, they will do so on an
upward-trending line. Since our entire economy—indeed, the
global economy—is built on cheap energy, this rise in the price
of petroleum-based fuels and materials will affect every aspect
of our lives— the kinds of work we do, how we travel, how we
heat and cool our homes, where we get our food, how we entertain
ourselves.
What are the
implications for tourism? Air travel will increasingly become a
luxury, as will long-distance travel by automobile. So-called
recreational vehicles will disappear from the roads. As a
result, destinations such as Disney World and Las Vegas and
enterprises such as cruise lines that depend on a vast flow of
visitors traveling from far away will begin to wither.
International travel will diminish, and sites dependent on
foreign visitors will suffer accordingly.
At the same time,
destinations close to major population centers may benefit. Like
much else in our lives, tourism will become more local. Instead
of driving or flying across the country to national parks or
resorts, more people will visit state parks and cultural centers
in their home regions. Instead of taking bus tours of Europe,
more Americans will seek out comparably vibrant settlements and
landscapes in our own country. Travelers will take shorter
trips, with fewer jumps from place to place, and perhaps with
longer stays in these nearby destinations. They will be drawn to
communities that are designed for walkers or bicyclists rather
than drivers, and that offer high quality public transportation,
such as light rail and electric trolleys. They will also be
drawn to communities that are conveniently accessible by
passenger railroad service, which is by far the most
fuel-efficient mode of transport.
In response to
higher gasoline prices, Americans have already reduced their
driving—logging 50 billion fewer miles between November 2007 and
August 2008 than during the same period a year earlier. This
reduction in driving, coupled with a shift toward smaller
vehicles, has led to a drop in revenue from the federal gasoline
tax, and to a serious shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund.
Congress recently voted to appropriate $9 billion from the
general fund to cover this deficit—thereby adding to the
national debt without addressing the underlying problem. The
problem is that our road system is overbuilt and
under-maintained. The interstate highway system is likely to
deteriorate further, making driving more hazardous as well as
more damaging to cars and trucks. If the gas tax is increased in
an effort to fund proper maintenance, drivers will cut back even
more on their mileage, thus continuing a downward spiral.
If we’re going to
draw on general funds to subsidize transportation, it would be
far more economical, and environmentally sound, to refurbish and
expand the passenger rail system, which was once the best in the
world and is now the worst among industrialized nations.
The rise in the
price of oil and natural gas will likewise undermine industrial
agriculture, which relies on cheap energy for the manufacture of
fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides, for the processing,
shipping, and storage of crops, for irrigation, and for the
operation of its gigantic machinery. Over the next century,
agriculture will revert to the practices that were common before
the cheap-oil binge—it will be smaller in scale, less dependent
on chemical inputs, more reliant on human labor and skill and on
animal power, more respectful of the health of soils and waters,
and it will serve a primarily local market. Similarly, global
franchises that sell cheap goods made in low-wage countries
12,000 miles away will gradually collapse as the cost of
manufacturing and shipping escalates. Local industries and
crafts and retail stores will begin to recover, and they will be
more responsive to the tastes and needs of their communities.
Interchangeable malls on the outskirts of town will shrivel, and
distinctive Main Streets will rebound.
Again, the
implications for tourism are clear: destinations that rely on
importing industrially-produced food and goods from great
distances will suffer, while towns and cities that support a
robust local agriculture and manufacturing base will thrive.
Visitors will be attracted to cities and towns that demonstrate
how we can wean ourselves from fossil fuel—by emphasizing
conservation and compact development, for example, by embracing
green building codes (such as the Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design, or LEED, standards), by sponsoring
municipal wind farms, by encouraging the installation of solar
collectors on homes, by facilitating car-sharing and bicycle
commuting. Such visionary communities will appeal to visitors by
providing glimpses of a viable future.
The second large
trend that will affect the future of tourism is the decline in
real income for most Americans and the increasing burden of debt
carried by individuals, households, and our nation as a whole.
Except for the highest income brackets in our country, real
earnings, adjusted for inflation, have been stagnant or
decreasing for the past thirty years. Virtually all of the
benefit from rising worker productivity since the advent of
computers has gone to those highest income brackets. Increases
in household income during this period have been due almost
entirely to the increase in the number of hours worked and the
entry of more women into the workforce. In most households,
there are no more available workers, and no more hours available
for working.
As the cost of
basic necessities, from housing to healthcare, has increased,
while hourly wages have stagnated or declined, most Americans
have had less and less money left over for discretionary
spending. Our net household savings rate has been declining
steadily, and is now close to zero, the lowest level since the
Great Depression. (The comparable figure in France is 12
percent, and in Germany 11 percent.) We have maintained our
inflated rate of consumption mainly through borrowing—on credit
cards, on home equity loans, and on tax cuts that have inflated
the national debt. The average American household now carries
$9,000 in credit card debt. Adding in car loans, mortgages, and
other forms of credit, the average household now owes a record
134 per cent of disposable income, nearly double the figure from
a generation earlier. The total household debt is now greater
than the Gross Domestic Product.
Over the past
decade, as families maxed out their credit cards, millions of
Americans financed major purchases, medical bills, and even
monthly expenses, by borrowing against the equity in their
homes. Now that house prices are sinking, that source of credit
has dried up, and millions of people owe more money on their
houses than their houses are worth. The result has been a record
number of foreclosures and personal bankruptcies. Even after the
current housing bubble collapses and recovery begins, the rising
cost of energy will make the far-flung suburbs and bloated
McMansions even less attractive, and will further depreciate
their value.
As a nation,
through federal spending, we have also been living far beyond
our means. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1980, the national
debt stood at just under $1 trillion. When he left office, the
figure had tripled, to nearly $3 trillion, mainly through a
combination of tax cuts and higher military spending. Bill
Clinton’s administration began with a debt of over $4 trillion
and ended with a debt of $5.5 trillion. During the second Bush
administration, the debt has so far doubled, to nearly $11
trillion, again primarily due to the coupling of tax cuts with
dramatic increases in military spending. This amounts to a debt
of $34,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. To fund
the current Wall Street bailout, Congress has just raised the
debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. Some of this debt is owed to
American citizens, but nearly a quarter is owed to foreign
investors, and our continued borrowing depends on a steady flow
of money from abroad. In 2006, for the first time in half a
century, more money flowed out of America to pay foreign
investors than flowed into America from our investments abroad.
From being the world’s largest investor, the United States has
now become the world’s largest debtor nation.
We have not
incurred this debt in order to invest in research, new
technologies, manufacturing facilities, infrastructure,
education, or other sources of future wealth; we have incurred
this debt primarily to fund wars and current consumption. Our
federal government is currently borrowing more than $3 billion a
day, more than $1 trillion a year. We have not paid for the
savings and loan debacle of the 1980s, have not paid for the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have not paid for the recent
bailouts of banks and Wall Street firms and Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac; we have merely put these enormous expenditures on
the public charge card, and have passed along the burden to
future taxpayers, including our children and grandchildren. As a
nation, we are strapped. Meanwhile, the rapid rise in private
indebtedness, foreclosures, job losses, and bankruptcies has
forced most Americans to cut back on discretionary spending.
Optimists will
claim that this is a temporary setback, that the American
economy will soon come roaring back, that the debt will
evaporate, and that once again we’ll become a nation of free
spenders. I am more persuaded by the pessimists, or what I would
call the realists, who argue that we are in for a long-term
decline in living standards. According to this view, the decline
will be driven not only by mounting debt, but also by the
transfer of American businesses and real estate to foreign
ownership; by the decades-long neglect of our nation’s
infrastructure, from bridges to sewage systems; by the
deterioration of our schools, and the consequent deterioration
of our workforce; by the loss of our manufacturing base; by the
distortion of our economy through military spending; by the
undermining of trust in our government, financial institutions,
and corporations, both at home and abroad; and by the increasing
disparities between the rich and the poor. And all of these
factors are in addition to our nation’s delay in reducing our
dependence on oil, in developing renewable sources of energy,
and in addressing serious environmental challenges, especially
global warming.
If we are indeed
headed toward a long term decline in living standards, again the
implications for tourism are clear. The wealthiest Americans
will still frequent luxury destinations, of course; but I am not
interested in tourism that is available only to the rich. For
the foreseeable future, most Americans are simply going to have
less money to spend on transportation, hotels, restaurant meals,
entrance fees, or travel-related shopping. The most attractive
destinations will require short trips, including journeys by
railroad or streetcar. They will offer abundant public spaces,
such as plazas and open-air markets and parks, where admission
is free, as well as museums and historic buildings where the
admission charge is modest. They will offer inexpensive
accommodations and meals that carry the flavor of the place—bed
and breakfasts or historic hotels, for example, rather than
chain motels, and local restaurants serving local produce rather
than generic fast food. These destinations will be inviting to
walkers, because the streets are clean and safe, the old
neighborhoods are intact, the downtown is filled with intriguing
shops, and the citizens of the place enjoy a convivial life.
The third large
trend that will affect the future of tourism is the degradation
of the environment, both locally and globally. Some of the
effects are obvious—the pollution of rivers, lakes, and beaches
will discourage visitors, as will air pollution. Some effects
are less obvious. For example, the necessity of imposing fees
for the release of carbon into the atmosphere will drive up the
cost of energy, and therefore of nearly everything else.
Similarly, the erosion and poisoning of topsoil due to
industrial farming will drive up the cost of food. The
proliferation of toxins in the soil, water, and air will
increase our healthcare expenditures, which are already by far
the highest per capita in the world. Population growth,
augmented by immigration, will place greater pressure on our
land, natural resources, and fellow species.
But the most
serious effects of environmental degradation, not merely on
tourism but on the habitability of our planet, will result from
the destabilizing of earth’s climate. I speak of
“destabilization,” rather than “global warming” or “climate
change,” because the latter terms do not convey the dire nature
of the predictions. There is a nearly unanimous consensus among
scientists that the atmospheric heating already underway will
lead to greater extremes of weather—longer droughts, fiercer
heat waves, more frequent flooding, more violent storms—and
possibly to major shifts in ocean currents and wind patterns.
The evidence so far supports these predictions—the record high
temperatures, the increased number and intensity of hurricanes,
the melting of ice caps and glaciers and permafrost, the drying
up of rivers, the rising of sea levels. The spread of epidemic
disease and invasive species brought on by atmospheric warming
has already added to our healthcare costs, depleted our
fisheries, and devastated our forests. The annual cost of damage
from storms, tornadoes, and flooding has risen into the tens of
billions of dollars.
There is an
equally broad consensus among scientists that the release of
greenhouse gases from human activity is a major contributor to
this atmospheric heating. With just under 5 per cent of the
world’s population, the United States produces roughly 25 per
cent of those emissions. Yet so far, as a nation, we have failed
to address this looming catastrophe in any meaningful way. There
have been piecemeal responses, by individuals and businesses and
municipalities, and even by a few states, but there have been no
comprehensive measures to radically reduce our carbon impact or
to prepare for the likely consequences of climate
destabilization. Meanwhile, there has been no serious effort at
reducing greenhouse emissions in the world’s rapidly
industrializing nations, such as China and India; and even in
nations, such as those in the European Union, which have shown a
higher degree of concern, there has been no significant
reduction in emissions. So it seems inevitable that the
atmosphere will continue heating, and that weather and climate
will depart more and more from the patterns within which our
urban industrial civilization developed.
No one can be sure
how any given place will fare, but the overall effect on our
economy and our quality of life will certainly be harmful. As
conditions deteriorate, tourism is likely to be seen by many
people as a luxury, both because of tight finances and because
of rising concerns about the ecological costs of travel. Like
the other large trends I’ve mentioned, this one suggests that
the forms of tourism most likely to endure will be more local,
more reliant on public transportation, more focused on
experiences of community than on recreational shopping.
Individual towns
and cities cannot solve global environmental problems on their
own, of course, but they can lobby for municipal, state, and
federal policies that boldly address these problems. They can
contribute to the collective effort through practices I’ve
already mentioned, such as the fostering of local agriculture
and renewable energy sources, or through the use of living roofs
on municipal buildings and solar-powered street cars. Travelers
will be drawn to communities that take good care of their home
ground, where the air and water are clean, green space is
abundant, trees line the streets, yards and parks are burgeoning
with plants and butterflies and birds. Indeed, the more our
environment as a whole deteriorates, the more attractive such
green places will become.
What I’ve been
arguing here is that tourism can flourish over the next century
only in communities that are ecologically sustainable, and our
communities can flourish only in proportion as we move,
individually and collectively, toward a more local, smaller
scale, less violent, less consumptive way of life. If the human
economy is to endure, it must align itself with the greater
economy of nature. Anyone concerned about the long-term
viability of tourism should therefore be equally concerned about
local, state, national, and global efforts at shifting from an
industrial growth economy to a steady-state economy grounded in
ecology and conservation. Such a shift will require the
development of energy derived from sun and wind and other
renewable sources, the renewal of railroads and other systems of
public transportation, the revival of locally-owned enterprises,
the fostering of local foods and arts and other aspects of
regional culture, the recovery of local news media, the
protection of green spaces and wild lands, the enhancement of
common goods such as parks and schools, the preservation of
topsoil and clean water and breathable air, and the careful
stewardship of nonrenewable resources such as oil.
Moving toward a
sustainable society will also require a shift in consciousness.
We will need to stop measuring “wealth” by the empty numbers
traded on financial markets, and begin measuring the true
sources of wealth in the condition of earth’s living systems, in
human knowledge and skill, in productive enterprises, and in the
real assets, both public and private, that actually contribute
to our wellbeing. We will need to give up thinking of ourselves
as free-floating individuals, empowered by money. We will need
to reimagine our lives as woven into human and natural
communities, dependent for our well-being on the goods we
share—from watersheds to scientific research, from the
transportation system to the judicial system, from language to
libraries. We will need to identify ourselves as conservers
rather than consumers, as stewards of the earth’s bounty rather
than exploiters. We will need to recognize our kinship with
other species. We will need to see that the construction and
maintenance of a vast military complex, and the fighting of
wars, is a grotesque waste of human and natural wealth, and a
distraction from our real challenges.
The challenges we
face are not primarily military, despite the ceaseless talk of
terrorists and enemies. Our greatest challenges are ecological
and social—the challenge of feeding ourselves, preserving
adequate supplies of fresh water, defending ourselves from
epidemic diseases, providing quality healthcare for all
citizens, reducing our levels of mental illness and crime,
renewing our schools, developing alternatives to cheap fossil
fuels, reducing our greenhouse emissions, rebuilding our
nation’s decrepit infrastructure, recovering a sense of the
common good.
The values
necessary for meeting these challenges are out of fashion now,
but they run deep in the American tradition; among them are
prudence, generosity, simplicity, humility, thrift, compassion,
forbearance, honesty, civic-mindedness, and concern for future
generations. Communities that are best able to embody these
values and face these challenges will be the most attractive
places to visit as well as the most humane places to live.
All of this may be wishful thinking on my part, of course.
Americans may keep on driving the interstates and crowding the
airports and traveling to resorts and casinos until the oil runs
out and foreclosure signs go up in front yards. But I have more
faith in my fellow citizens than that. I am betting that more
and more of us will wake up to our predicament, reconsider our
behavior, and begin acting more conservingly and responsibly in
all aspects of our lives, including in the way we travel. If I
overestimate our capacity for thoughtful change, and if we
continue to consume and spend and mine and pave as recklessly as
we have done for the past century, then the coming century will
be grim indeed, and the fate of tourism will be the least of our
concerns.
But I refuse to
accept that dismal prospect. I won’t surrender to such a future
for my three young granddaughters, or for anyone else’s children
and grandchildren. No doubt some people will keep gadding about
in search of thrills, amusement rides, floor shows, slot
machines, golf links, and auto races, as long as they can afford
to do so. But I believe that such distractions will come to be
seen as wasteful and vacuous. As the cumulative effects of
rising energy costs, personal and public debt, and environmental
stress take hold, many Americans, I predict, will hunger for
something more substantial from their journeys. They will travel
less for recreation than for illumination. In seeking visions of
a desirable future, they will be drawn to places that
demonstrate more wholesome and ecologically sound ways of
living.
Henry David
Thoreau wrote in Walden, “I have traveled a good deal in
Concord.” Readers have taken this to mean that he chose to
explore his hometown and the surrounding countryside, rather
than jaunt to more glamorous locales. No doubt that is part of
what he meant. And we would all do well to pay closer attention
to our neighborhoods. But Thoreau also ventured further afield,
leaving records of his excursions up the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers, as well as to Maine, Cape Cod, Long Island, and other
destinations. So when he remarked, “I have travelled a good deal
in Concord,” I think he also meant that all of his journeys,
near or far, deepened his understanding and affection for his
home place, and thereby made him a better citizen of Concord. We
would do well to bring the fruits of our own travels back to
enrich the places from which we set out.
Our travels affect
more than our home places and the places we visit. Every journey
sends ripples of influence around the planet and into the
future. Whether those influences are, on the whole, benign or
destructive depends on how and why we travel, and on what we do
with the knowledge we’ve gained. Because Earth is our only
dwelling place, no matter where we go on our journeys, we
are always traveling at home.