Inheriting the Travel Bug: Roots of a Wandering Spirit
Do we catch the travel bug from our environment, or is it passed through our genes, like our hair and eye color? Here is how it all works out for me.
This post was originally posted on my website which you can read here.
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When I Developed My Travel Bug...
It was long after I caught the travel bug and began my solo travel adventures that I learned about some (I still have more to hear about!) of my grandmother’s adventures.
Not until after I had visited South Africa for a summer, and spent my 23rd birthday at Machu Picchu, did I find out about my grandmother camping on the beaches of the Israel and Egypt, or how she cycled around Germany with the equivalent of twenty bucks in her pocket.
Once I started hearing these stories, I began to wonder if perhaps my desire to roam and explore is not something that sparked randomly in my life, but rather a trait I inherited.
This post is a short story I wrote, which originally I thought I’d pitch to publish elsewhere, but I feel why wait to share stories that I’m much rather share now.
Haven't Caught the Travel Bug Yet?
My goal in writing is to not just inspire you to scratch that travel bug itch and acquire more rewarding and deeper experiences, but empower you with the confidence to get out into the world!
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Tree Roots and Human Roots
Tree roots provide plants with necessities; water, minerals, and nutrients are taken from the soil beneath the plant and travel upwards to the rest of the tree’s body to help it live and grow.
Humans’ roots comprise many things: where we were born, our ancestral lineage, the values we were raised with, and the beliefs that drive our decision-making.
While studying for my undergraduate degree, the thought of taking a semester abroad scared me. I was afraid to be away from my boyfriend, friends, and family for so long. I worried that being so far from my roots would make me homesick.
Some tree root systems are based on a single ‘tap-root’, where the roots are based around the tree’s initial root that lies directly underneath the tree’s trunk.
About eighty percent of trees use a ‘lateral root’ system, like the maple and birch trees in the forests I walk through with my mom’s terrier back home in Canada. These trees grow roots that spread wide from the base of the trunk, rather than sinking deep into the soil where the first root was created.
The Travel Bug in my Genes
My grandmother was born in Germany, traveled to Canada where she met my grandfather, lived in Israel for several years after getting married, traveled with him to places in South and Central America, and moved to Switzerland where she gave birth to my father and uncle.
Once her sons were young teens, she moved to Scarborough, and later into the house where I spent my afternoons as a little girl picking raspberries and blackberries in her backyard in the summertime.
To this day her travel bug persists. Several years back, even though flying is difficult for her with her arthritis and health, she convinced my dad to take her to see the Grand Canyon.
As I grew older, I became more curious about the world beyond the ‘taproot’ of where I came from.
After I graduated, now single, without a job, or subsequent studies to hold me down, I signed up for a volunteer trip in South Africa (read about about my water poisoning incident).
Less than a year later, I traveled to Peru to climb up Macchu Pichu and trek through the Amazon. It seemed that I too caught the travel bug like my grandmother had, yet I still felt tied to my life back in Toronto.
Each time I returned home to continue on the path of a career that would keep me close to my roots. A bump in the road—a rejection letter from my post-graduate program of choice—forced me to think more like a tree.
Do the roots that support my life need to be firmly set in a single spot?
My Biggest Leap
I left home again for a whole year (the trip I document in my upcoming memoir). It terrified me to leave but leaving was less scary than the thought of staying in one place forever. After that year of traveling, I worked remotely and later moved to work abroad as an expat.
Four years ago in Nicaragua, I walked down the beach licking melting ice cream with Nicole, my adoptive ‘sobrina’ of the family I rented a room from. Last week instead of her usual updates about school or volleyball, I received a heart wrenching photo of her in a hospital bed. She is fine, and recovering from an accident at work, but the distress and fear for her health pulled at my heart like it would if anyone at home became ill.
While I lived in Erbil, I would drop off my thick duvets for dry-cleaning at the nearby shop. The man always greeted me with a smile, and when I walked in to collect my linens, he never had to ask for my name or search through his notes. When I needed to mend the sleeve on a dress, he refused to take payment, “no charge,” he said as he handed back the newly stitched dress.
Compared to some friends back home in Toronto, my roots in Toronto aren’t as deep as theirs. My roots are spread far, across the Pacific coast of Central America to the flat desert land of Iraq and many other places.
Embracing my Laterally Spreading Roots
Sometimes trees create ‘sinker roots’ that dig deep into the soil at a specific spot within the lateral roots. This sinker root helps pick up more nutrients in the soil and provides extra support for the tree.
I may find a place like my grandmother did, where I choose to spend the rest of my life, creating a new sinker root.
But for now, I’m not done spreading new roots. The connections to people I’ve met, and places I’ve called home, if even for a short while, are all part of what keeps me grounded, and supports me to live, grow, and explore tirelessly.
Have you also inherited the travel bug from parents or grandparents? What adventures did they take that inspired you? Did you like the analogy of tree roots to humans? Let me know in the comments!
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And as always, never stop exploring!
Much love,
Danika