Travel and Children

One of the great pleasures of travel is struggle. Those memorable moments when, with varying levels of concern, you realize you are a bit lost. Or you have wearily, after many reconnoiters with yourself, stumbled upon some unexpected sight, tavern, or place to sleep for the night.

This is the antithesis of the cruise ship. There, besides the potential to get sick from the buffet, you are cocooned in a situation that might as well be a stay-cation with a high definition tv. The amenities are all things you could find closer to home. The experience is a pampering and entertainment - the travel is auxiliary, if not tertiary. Danger is absent, and so, therefore, is the point of travel. If the ship never left harbor, there'd be minimal difference in experience.

All the great travel writers discuss the need for a bit of imperilment. The thrill, of course, is that you get to test your capabilities in a way not often afforded the modern person. Commuting on the same road, going to the same job with differing but similar tasks and problems to solve: you rarely feel the master of your fate in these daily situations. Travel presents novel challenges: navigating a subway map in a foreign language, using a topographic map while backpacking. Regardless of relative 'ruggedness' the sense of accomplishment is what counts. You managed to figure it out, get out of trouble, find that place you were looking for, win the trust of someone on the other side of the world.

Traveling alone is, of course, the purest expression of this flirtation with danger. Lucky are those who accumulate a wealth of such stories: scrambling over a rock ledge, the relief of finding the inn late at night in the rain, the pride in navigating your way through new land. These victories, once essential to our ancestors, are increasingly remote to us. By finding ourselves immersed in a foreign place - National Park, remote country, new city - we get to access that validating struggle once more.

For many well-off modern young people, this experience is a rite of passage. We spend a period of our late teens and early twenties in these travels and explorations. For most, though (around 70% of us), at some point, this isolated traveling is changed, as we become parents. We may still take trips on our own, perhaps, but a new type of travel has emerged: one where struggle and victory is measured in our ability to keep our children reasonably safe.

Now the easier, harmless, path seems far more inviting. The imperilment of travel is increasingly held at bay. We may even contemplate a cruise, or a trip to Disneyland as the better alternative. The terms of the trade are enticing: entertainment and fun for the low, low price of travel. Such a calculus beckons our deal-hungry minds. The cost to us is merely giving up the struggle travel entails. 

And why not? After all, our children cannot, meaningfully, 'travel' the same way an adult can. They cannot, safely, be put into those situations. Of course they will find similar situations anyway, at home, depending on how relatively feral they are. They will still need to solve problems, get out of trouble, and work through hardship, yes - but that describes an evening of wrestling with pre-algebra, not the type of danger inherent in travel.

Many seek an in-between answer: going to places. It looks like travel. After all, it involved a long car ride or flight. You saw things in person, and you can boast you've been there. It wasn't as cozy as a cruise: you slept in a tent, or had to deal with odors and screaming children (perhaps your own) on a plane. Going places is better than going nowhere, but it's not the same as travel. Discomfort is not the same as danger. The struggles are reduced to irritations: delayed takeoffs, rude waiters, noisy neighboring campsites.

Edward Abbey, the great author of the American deserts, warned us against this type of tourism. "You can't see anything from a car;" he writes in Desert Solitaire, "you've got to get out of the contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll see something, maybe." Barry Lopez, in Arctic Dreams, makes the same point: "The plane is a great temptation; but to learn anything of the land, to have any sense of the relevancy of the pertinent maps, you must walk away from the planes. You must get off into the country and sleep on the ground, or take an afternoon to take a tussock apart. Travel on the schedule of muskoxen."

Does this same sense of 'travel' apply to places less harsh than the tundra or the canyonlands? I think so. So long as there is real struggle, it is travel. If the landscape doesn't provide it, there must be another element of the unfamiliar, of putting yourself in a challenging, potentially dangerous, new situation. Spending time adapting to a culture that runs radically different from your own, and overcoming your ideas, sense of time, prejudices - that can do it. The struggle of being surrounded in the ebb and flow of a thousand voices you do not understand, and the need to make yourself understood - that can do it. Depending on just how sheltered you were raised, even navigating the public transit of a different city in your own country can qualify, perhaps, so long as you do it without help. Asking for directions is smart, but does cheat one of the validation of figuring it out on your own. 

Regardless, then, of the locale - whether the wilderness or the big city - the struggle still remains: looming and blockading the cautious, responsible parents from engaging with travel with their children. To overcome that obstacle is perhaps not even advisable - imperiling children is an offense, after all. 

So, we must as parents, perhaps, settle for going places. Letting them learn the rhythms and patterns of leaving their homes. Navigating terminals, rest stops, hotels, campgrounds. 'Going places' becomes another piece of their expanding universe, filed away with 'school', 'the backyard', and 'holidays'. 

But, if we are fortunate, as they get older, towards their teens and twenties, our children will break free from merely going places, and discover that magic feeling - the swell in the breast, the goosebumps on the scalp - that accompanies finding they can overcome the struggle. That they are now capable of charting their way through the challenge of the unfamiliar, all while far from home. Then they too, someday, will understand what it means to travel with all its danger.

A Better National Garden of American Heroes

So the President is doing the sort of project I actually think is nice – 250 noteworthy Americans in a statuary garden for America’s 250^th anniversary. Of course, being Trump, it isn’t a great list – although, admittedly, it did exceed my expectations. Nevertheless, here’s my own list of 250 people, if I was making the Garden. They are arranged roughly chronologically, based on their accomplishments:

 

1.     Phyllis Wheatley – Enslaved female poet

2.     Benjamin Franklin – Scientist, statesman, abolitionist, and publisher

3.     Thomas Paine – Revolutionary pamphleteer

4.     John Paul Jones – Revolutionary Naval hero

5.     Alexander Hamilton – Revolutionary and influential Secretary of the Treasury

6.     James Madison – Constitutional author

7.     George Washington – Revolutionary War general and first President of the U.S.

8.     John Adams – Revolutionary and second President

9.     Thomas Jefferson – Declaration of Independence author, polymath, third President

10.  Noah Webster – Lexicographer of American English

11.  Mary Lyon – Women’s education pioneer

12.  Sequoyah – Lexicographer for Cherokee Nation

13.  Walt Whitman – Influential poet

14.  Horace Mann – Foundational educator who advocated for public schooling

15.  Samuel Morse – Telegraph innovator

16.  Sarah Josepha Hale – Reformer and author

17.  Dorothea Dix – Reformer for mental institutions

18.  Edgar Alan Poe – Short story innovator and poet

19.  Elizabeth Blackwell – Female medical pioneer

20.  Lucretia Mott – Suffragist and Seneca Falls organizer

21.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton – Suffragist and Seneca Falls organizer

22.  Henry David Thoreau – Author and civil disobedience pioneer

23.  Herman Melville – Iconic author

24.  Eunice Foote – Climate scientist who discovered greenhouse effect

25.  Sojourner Truth – Groundbreaking black feminist

26.  Frederick Douglass – Enslaved autobiographer

27.  Hariet Jacobs – Enslaved autobiographer

28.  Harriet Tubman – Underground Railroad operator

29.  Frederick Law Olmsted – Pioneering landscape architect

30.  Hariet Beecher Stowe – Abolitionist author and home economist

31.  John Brown – Abolitionist martyr

32.  Abraham Lincoln – President who guided the nation through the Civil War and abolished slavery

33.  Louisa May Alcott – Acclaimed author

34.  Ulysses S. Grant – Civil War general and President

35.  Luther Burbank – Influential horticulturist

36.  Victoria Woodhull – Suffragist and reformer

37.  Susan B. Anthony – Important suffragist

38.  Mark Twain – Iconic humorist and author

39.  Clara Barton – American Red Cross founder

40.  Josiah Willard Gibbs – Influential mathematician and physicist

41.  Alexander Graham Bell – Telephone inventor

42.  Bass Reeves – Legendary frontier marshal

43.  Annie Oakley – Exhibition sharpshooter

44.  Mary Baker Eddy – Founder of Christian Science

45.  Thomas Nast – Iconic cartoonist

46.  Sarah Winnemucca – Native rights activist

47.  John Singer Sargent – Important painter

48.  Emily Dickinson – Influential poet

49.  Henry Bergh – Founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

50.  Helen Keller – Disability advocate, suffragist, and reformer

51.  Anne Sullivan – Teacher of Keller

52.  Thomas Edison – Iconic inventor

53.  Nikola Tesla – Iconic inventor

54.  Nellie Bly – Influential journalist

55.  Mary McLeod Bethune – Suffragist and Civil Rights activist

56.  John Muir – Conservationist legend

57.  Martha Hughes Cannon – Suffragist and reformer, fought polygamy in Utah

58.  Theodore Roosevelt – President, conservationist, reformer, Nobel Laureate

59.  L. Frank Baum – Influential children’s author

60.  WEB Du Bois – Author, sociologist, Civil Rights leader

61.  Orville Wright – Flight pioneer

62.  Wilbur Wright – Flight pioneer

63.  Louis Comfort Tiffany – Iconic glass artist

64.  Zitkala-Sa – Author and Native rights activist

65.  Ida B. Wells – Journalist, suffragist, Civil Rights leader

66.  Upton Sinclair – Author and reformer

67.  Ida Tarbell – Journalist and muckraker

68.  Mother Jones – Labor leader for miners and child laborers

69.  Louis Armstrong – Jazz pioneer

70.  Jane Addams – Immigrant rights activist, Nobel Laureate

71.  Margaret ‘Molly’ Brown – Philanthropist and socialite

72.  Willis Carrier – Inventor of air-conditioning

73.  Alice Paul – Suffragist who helped get the 19^th Amendment passed

74.  Clarence Darrow – Lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union

75.  Annie Jump Cannon – Influential astronomer

76.  Jim Thorpe – Olympian and athletic icon

77.  Mary Pickford – Silent film actress and cofounder of United Artists

78.  Buster Keaton – Silent film pioneer

79.  Fanny Brice – Actress, humorist, and Follies star

80.  Jeannette Rankin – First female Congressional Representative

81.  Margaret Sanger – Founder of Planned Parenthood and supporter of birth control

82.  Duke Ellington – Legendary jazz composer

83.  Amelia Earhart – Flight pioneer

84.  Harry Houdini – Entertainer and hoax-buster

85.  Henry Ford – Industrialist and developer of mass production

86.  Edwin Hubble – Important cosmologist

87.  Margaret Mead – Influential anthropologist

88.  Emma Goldman – Radical feminist and anarchist

89.  Philo Farsnworth – Television inventor

90.  Robert Goddard – Rocket inventor

91.  Willa Cather – Acclaimed author

92.  Will Rogers – Entertainer, author and humorist

93.  Bessie Smith – Pioneering blues singer

94.  Gertrude Stein – Author and cultural icon

95.  Frances Perkins – First female Cabinet Secretary, developed Social Security

96.  Dorothea Lange – Important photographer

97.  Georgia O’Keefe – Groundbreaking modern artist

98.  Robert Johnson – Blues music icon

99.  Frank Lloyd Wright – Legendary architect

100.        Jesse Owens – Olympian and Civil Rights figure

101.        Zora Neale Hurston – Acclaimed author

102.        Walt Disney – Animator and entrepreneur

103.        Marian Anderson – Operatic and spiritual singer

104.        Irving Berlin – Iconic composer

105.        John Dewey – Educator and philosopher

106.        Martha Graham – Modern dance pioneer

107.        Judy Garland – Actress and singer

108.        Julia Morgan – Pioneering female architect

109.        Estee Lauder – Cosmologist and entrepreneur

110.        Woody Guthrie – Foundational folk musician

111.        Billie Holiday – Iconic jazz and blues singer

112.        Katharine Hepburn – Acclaimed actress

113.        Marjory Stoneman Douglas – Important conservationist

114.        Richard Rodgers – Broadway legend

115.        Oscar Hammerstein II – Broadway legend

116.        Franklin Delano Roosevelt – President who developed New Deal and led America through WWII

117.        Ansel Adams – Legendary photographer

118.        Barabara McClintock – Geneticist, Nobel Laureate

119.        Maria Tallchief – America’s first prima ballerina

120.        George Balanchine – Ballet innovator

121.        Norman Rockwell – Influential artist

122.        A. Philip Randolph – Civil Rights icon

123.        Ella Baker – Civil Rights organizer

124.        Hedy Lamarr – Actress and inventor

125.        Josephine Baker – Actress, spy, and Civil Rights figure

126.        Albert Einstein – Legendary physicist, Nobel Laureate

127.        Benjamin O. Davis Jr. – Leader of Tuskegee Airmen

128.        Dwight Eisenhower – WWII Commander and President

129.        Chester Nimitz – WWII Admiral in the Pacific

130.        George C. Marshall – Army General and originator of Marshall Plan, Nobel Laureate

131.        Robert H. Jackson – Nuremberg prosecutor and Supreme Court Justice

132.        Elanor Roosevelt – First Lady and force behind United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights

133.        Jackie Robinson – Baseball legend

134.        Maria Martinez – Groundbreaking ceramicist

135.        Ruth Asawa – Innovative sculptor

136.        Richard Feynman – Iconic physicist, Nobel Laureate

137.        John von Neumann – Mathematician, physicist, and economist

138.        Hank Williams – Country music pioneer

139.        Grace Hopper – Foundational computer programmer

140.        Margaret Chase Smith – Anti-McCarthy Senator

141.        Edward R. Murrow – Anti-McCarthy journalist

142.        Virginia Apgar – Obstetric modernizer

143.        Henrietta Lacks – Patient with unique cells that have cured millions

144.        Jonas Salk – Vaccinologist, found the cure for polio

145.        Chuck Berry – Rock and Roll pioneer

146.        Arthur Miller – Iconic playwright

147.        Mamie Till – Civil rights figure

148.        Paul Tillich – Influential theologian

149.        Eugenie Clark – Scientist, shark expert

150.        Lucille Ball – Actress, television pioneer, businesswoman

151.        Marie Tharp – Oceanographer, discovered plate tectonics

152.        Alfred Hitchcock – Groundbreaking film director

153.        Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe – International architect

154.        Walter Reuther – Labor leader and policy advocate

155.        James Baldwin – Author and Civil Rights figure

156.        Francis Oldham Kelsey – Pharmacologist and regulations pioneer

157.        Linus Pauling – Chemist and disarmament advocate, dual Nobel Laureate

158.        Robert Noyce – Microchip developer, founder of Intel

159.        Dr. Seuss – Children’s literature legend

160.        Julia Child – Innovative cook and author

161.        Johnny Cash – Influential country musician

162.        Patsy Cline – Innovative country musician

163.        Frank Sinatra – Iconic singer

164.        Ella Fitzgerlad – Important singer

165.        Stanley Kubrick – Acclaimed film director

166.        Rosa Parks – Civil Rights activist

167.        Martin Luther King Jr. – Civil Rights legend, Nobel Laureate

168.        Bayard Rustin – Civil Rights organizer

169.        Malcolm X – Civil rights icon

170.        John F. Kennedy – President, realigned the political parties

171.        Lyndon B. Johnson – President, launched Medicare and Medicaid

172.        Patsy Mink – First Asian-American female Representative, Title IX champion

173.        Hannah Arendt – Influential Political theorist

174.        Betty Friedan – Second-Wave feminist

175.        Rachel Carson – Founder of the modern Environmental movement

176.        Norman Borlaug – Agronomist, Nobel Laureate

177.        Bob Dylan – Legendary musician, Nobel Laureate

178.        Stan Lee – Comics icon

179.        Clair Patterson – Physicist and regulation pioneer against dangerous lead

180.        Larry Itliong – Farm labor organizer

181.        Dolores Huerta – Legendary labor leader and activist

182.        Billy Frank Jr. – Native rights activist

183.        Aretha Franklin – Soul music icon

184.        Thurgood Marshall – First black Supreme Court Justice

185.        Maurice Hilleman – Vaccinologist who developed MMR, hepatitis, and many others

186.        Eunice Kennedy Shriver – Special Olympics founder and philanthropist

187.        Maya Angelou – Memoirist, poet, artist, and Civil Rights activist

188.        Katherine Johnson – NASA mathematician who worked on Apollo

189.        Michael Collins – Apollo 11 crew

190.        Buzz Aldrin – Apollo 11 crew

191.        Neil Armstrong – Apollo 11 crew

192.        Muhammad Ali – Boxing legend

193.        Bruce Lee – Influential martial artist and actor

194.        Joan Didion – Acclaimed author and essayist

195.        Marsha P. Johnson – LGBT activist

196.        Judy Blume – Influential children’s author

197.        John Rawls – Political philosopher

198.        Gloria Steinem – Feminist activist

199.        Angela Davis – Radical feminist and academic

200.        Carl Bernstein – Journalist, exposed Watergate

201.        Bob Woodward – Journalist, exposed Watergate

202.        Katharine Graham – Newspaper publisher, released the Pentagon Papers

203.        Jim Henson – Puppeteer and educational television innovator

204.        Marlon Brando – Innovative actor

205.        Billie Jean King – Tennis star and LGBT activist

206.        Vera Rubin – Astronomer, discovered dark matter

207.        Stevie Wonder – R&B music icon

208.        Nam June Paik – Founder of video art

209.        Stephen Sondheim – Broadway icon

210.        Will Eisner – Influential cartoonist and graphic novel pioneer

211.        Betty Ford – First Lady, physical and mental health advocate

212.        Dolly Parton – Legendary musician and philanthropist

213.        Willie Colon – Salsa music pioneer

214.        Rita Moreno – Acclaimed actress

215.        Harvey Milk – LGBT icon, politician

216.        Judith Heumann – Disability rights activist

217.        Pauli Murray – Activist and priest

218.        Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Lawyer and Supreme Court Justice

219.        Sandra Day O’Connor – First female Supreme Court Justice

220.        Philip Johnson – Postmodern architect

221.        Wilma Mankiller – First female tribal leader

222.        Toni Morrison – Influential author, Nobel Laureate

223.        Isabel Allende – Important author and exile

224.        Tina Turner – Iconic rock singer

225.        Florence Griffiths Joyner – Track star, record-holder

226.        Oprah Winfrey – Television innovator and entrepreneur

227.        Maya Lin – Sculptor, designed Vietnam Memorial

228.        Dian Fossey – Primatologist and martyr for conservation

229.        Judith Butler – Pioneer in gender studies

230.        Kimberle Crenshaw – Important developer of racial studies

231.        Claudia Goldin – Economist, Nobel Laureate

232.        Bill Gates – Microsoft cofounder and computing innovator

233.        Stephen Spielberg – Influential film director

234.        Elizabeth Loftus – Psychologist of memory

235.        Frank Gehry – Deconstructivist architect

236.        Steve Jobs – Apple cofounder and computing innovator

237.        Jay Z – Rap music icon

238.        Beyonce – Influential and highly acclaimed musician

239.        Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson – Journalist, exposed Catholic abuse scandal

240.        Meryl Streep – Legendary film and television actress

241.        Louise Gluck – Poet, Nobel Laureate

242.        Kara Walker – Influential artist

243.        Henry Louis Gates Jr. – Prominent black studies scholar and influential genealogist

244.        Audra McDonald – Legendary stage actress

245.        Barack Obama – First black President, Nobel Laureate

246.        Hillary Clinton – First Lady, Senator, and Presidential nominee

247.        Nancy Pelosi – First female Speaker of the House

248.        Tarana Burke – Activist against sexual violence

249.        Alex Honnold – Rock climbing legend

250.        Shoshana Zuboff – Economist, charted ‘surveillance capitalism’