In the start of the year, I was lucky enough to travel to Iceland for a week and mark another country off my list.
On the plane ride home, I sat staring at the sun setting over the Olympic Mountains. The same mountains I marked my arm with in black ink, letting me know that I have finally reached home. I didn’t feel happy and I didn’t feel sad — I felt modest. My corner of the world, the PNW, is tiny.
The familiarity of home is comforting, but adjusting to coming home is always the same. My adrenaline runs until I get back to my house, have to unpack and then my post-travel depression sets in. I begin to crave airplanes, hotels, suitcases, unfamiliar food and hearing languages I don’t understand.
The travel bug isn’t an itch you scratch once and it’s gone. With each airplane someone boards, they’re only going to want to board more and never take that flight home. On the flight home, they’ll start to plan their next trip in their head.
There is something about stepping off the plane into an unknown area that gives people time to reflect on themselves. I am silent when I walk around a new city because I am taking in everything about that place I possibly can and thinking about how lucky I should feel to be there.
Every time I come home from a trip, I am more grateful for all I have in my life than ever before. I’ve seen poverty and I’ve seen ridiculous wealth, but seeing each side of the coin has given me a new sense of appreciation for what I have.
I feel humbled by my ability to travel the world at 21 years old, but it’s also very empowering knowing I will never be able to get rid of my desire to travel.
It’s much more than just the streets of a new city that will change a person, but they will meet people that change their outlook on life. Their stories will make the travel bug grow.
In my month spent in Ecuador, I met a woman from England that one day decided she didn’t like who she was becoming. She sold her belongings and packed her life into a backpack. That was almost two years before I met her. She traveled all of South America and took a job on a ranch over the summers in Montana. Her story resonated with me, and I will never forget how inspired I was after we parted ways with her in the Amazon. If she could do it, I could do it.
In a society that puts so much emphasis on having work experience, finding a job and making money, I think traveling is something that you can’t put a price on.
I want others to feel the same way I do when I board an airplane or drink a national beer. I feel humbled, enriched and empowered.
Cassidy Callaham can be reached at arg-opinion@uidaho.edu