Puddle Jumping

Picture this: You’re amid the bustle of Lower Manhattan in 1850, the streets congested with horses competing with coal-powered trains puffing black soot into the air. Columbia College is located on 50th Street, below the future site of Central Park, which consists of shantytowns and farm animals soon to be replaced by paths, ponds and pastures. Wealthy and desperate to escape, you pack your weekend bag and head to your vacation house in Upper Manhattan. The recent extension of urban railroads enables you to shuttle to the countryside faster than ever!

Having barely left Morningside Heights since September, I feel the same itch to escape. The difference is that when I think about leaving, it’s not for Inwood or Westchester but rather Oregon (Or-a-gin, not Or-a-gone, East Coasters), which in my homesick moments assumes the hyperbolic image of the pioneer homestead amid pine trees and mountains. However, in reality, my home relies on buses, cars, jets, and highways. From New Yorkers in 1850 to me, a college student in 2008, the conditions and options have changed but the sentiment remains.

Ease of movement allows people to visit each other frequently and cheaply compared to the past (no more pesky problems like cholera and broken wagon axles). Yet we pay a non-monetary price for our ability to move fast and far.

Our cavalier attitude towards travel creates a culture of expected privilege in which we neglect to acknowledge that not everyone can afford to shuttle between coasts and continents. Columbia benefits greatly from having a geographically diverse mixture of people, but the community also harbors a sense of normalcy about flitting cross-country or “across the pond.” I frequently hear students toss around suggestions and invitations to travel abroad on trips squeezed within short breaks. While appealing and well-intentioned, these discussions return me to a fifth grade memory of sneaking out of class for a trip to Disneyland. While I prized the indulgence of missing two days of class, my mother urged me not to volunteer my plans to classmates, emphasizing that travel and vacations were luxuries not available to everyone. Even now, embarrassment washes over me when I try to respond to comments from friends at home such as, “There she goes again, leaving us for New York,” as if I wore travel like a flashy fur coat. In contrast, another friend expressed discomfort leaving our suburban enclave for Portland, which is only 13 miles east of my hometown and feels eerily empty after a semester in New York City.

Consequentially, I highly value any opportunity to travel. Some of my fellow students’ international travel experiences amaze me, as does their unfamiliarity with the United States. Columbia students represent all 50 states plus related territories but few people express a desire to see much of the U.S., particularly the Midwestern, Southern, and rural areas. In fact, I sense only a limited desire among students to visit the outer boroughs. As Astoria, Queens and Brighton Beach, Brooklyn demonstrate, distance is not an absolute measure of cultural and geographical variety.

Yet you can travel far and land somewhere very similar to your starting point. Technological and industrial modernization coupled with our cavalier attitudes towards travel contribute to this sense of sameness. Except for vegetation, parts of my suburb appear little different from the suburbs of anywhere else. Yet two miles from my house lives Roy, a 95-year-old farmer who dug the root cellar for his house in 1933 and continues to shuffle down rows of corn in blue coveralls, hoeing weeds at the base of the stalks. Only now Roy sits and rests at the end of each row, and he uses corn from genetically-modified seeds because, well, Elmer down the road started to do it and his fields looked mighty fine last summer! (Rumor has it the corn tastes worse for it.)

I can barely imagine my neighborhood at the time of Roy’s birth—my vision of home would appear less exaggerated—but I bet there are a few places in the United States that come close, retaining more than the mere traces of localism left in much of the country. At least if you don’t look too closely at modern technological improvements in plumbing and cars. Speaking of which, we cannot ignore that for all of our energy-saving efforts, long-distance travel contributes an increasing amount to our carbon emissions and is projected to rise.

I cannot deny the benefits of experiencing life beyond our borders, given our misconceptions of some countries and their reciprocal misunderstanding of ours, thanks to fallacious representations of the United States in American popular media. Also, it’s easier for us to reflect on ourselves from afar.

But let’s not undermine the value of traveling not only within our country, but our states, our cities, our neighborhoods, and in Thoreau’s conception, ourselves. A friend of mine recently asked if there were any student travel grants applicable to the U.S. None exist that I know of, but I think it’s a wonderful idea that would help counteract our collective tendency to undervalue the luxury of travel. Furthermore, it might slowly renew our pride in our origins and stem the tide of post-graduates flocking to megalopolises like New York City in search of more vitality than they leave behind in distant suburbs. Perhaps then we would have a better appreciation for the luxury of travel, more respect for our environment, and a renewed sense of place.

Becky Davies is a Columbia College junior majoring in urban studies. Home Ec runs alternate Mondays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com