Wanderlust

No matter what their political affiliation or where they are from, I have found that adults who travel eagerly to new places fairly consistently--both inside and outside of their native country--have a strong tendency to hold both realistic and complex viewpoints regarding national and geopolitics, society, and life in general. They also tend to display their viewpoints in manners that are respectful, intellectually impressive, and culturally insightful, and they tend to be open to other viewpoints if they are displayed in similar manners.

On the other hand, I have found that many adults who lead almost exclusively provincial lives, despite having the resources to travel fairly widely (and there are many people who fall into this group, though they will disingenuously claim that they "can't afford to travel"), tend to display their viewpoints in repetitious, bluster-filled, slogan-esque manners that are somewhat juvenile in nature. (I am not speaking of those folks for whom travel is indeed economically impossible; they are obviously exempted from my critical viewpoint regarding this issue. I simply dislike middle class Americans who insist that they don't have the means to travel; they often have far more than "middle class" folks from other industrialized countries, and yet the non-American folks often tend to travel more than their American counterparts.)

Travel, it seems to me, is indeed important. I've always gravitated toward people who have a mindset that tends toward wanderlust. Having returned to Minnesota relatively recently, I simply cannot wait to begin traveling extensively again (and maybe, a year or so down the line, living and working abroad again...or perhaps simply elsewhere in the U.S.). This is not due to a "dislike of Minnesota," as a cynic would suggest, but rather a sense that there is always a whole wide world out there to explore. Because she is from England, Mrs. Hasslington and I plan to fly across the Atlantic in order to revisit our old British stomping grounds this coming summer. That being said, though she has explored the West Coast and has been to New York and parts of Canada--and though we currently live in the Upper Midwest--Mrs. Hasslington has yet to travel extensively in many parts of North America.

Hence, we're in the early stages of planning brief trips, via car and via plane, to various cities across the U.S. that we find "intriguing" for one reason or another. (We'll likely expand this to include Canada and elsewhere from there.) Though we have far from a lot of travel funding--we're "teacherly" types, after all--we're excited to save money in order to visit what we gather are "up-and-coming" places in the forthcoming months. Here are a few of the "up-and-coming" places we are considering visiting, though in what order we've not yet decided:

--Boise, Idaho (...we've heard great things about its attraction to book-readers of all varieties, as well as its beauty...)
--Natchez, Mississippi (...cycling The Trace seems like fun...)
--Omaha, Nebraska (...I cheated just there, as I went to university in that city; still, I haven't been back for a visit in a half dozen years, and I hear that it has changed quite a bit over that span of time...)
--Portland, Oregon (...it's been "up-and-coming" for years now, but we added it anyway...)
--Santa Fe, New Mexico (...and its larger nearby neighbor, Albuquerque...)

--Also, Maine's coastal towns, and Bangor (...none of which might at present be considered "up-and-coming," but which have always seemed interesting nonetheless...)

Then there are the "places-of-the-moment," as it were (Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; etc.), which also look intriguing.

I have traveled quite a bit outside of my own country over the past several years, but in part because of this I have scaled-back on traveling inside of the U.S. So, I'm really looking forward to spending a weekend here or there when the funds become available in order to better "rediscover" my nation from the point of view of a former (and perhaps future) expatriate. Mrs. Hasslington--who is an extensive world traveler--is British, so she looks forward to exploring the vast American landscape, which is far different from her native country.

I simply cannot for the life of me see why more people don't travel more often, even if just for a few days here and there. A fellow teacher, who happens to be married with two young children, once told me, "The worst thing parents can do is be boring. It sets a bad example for their kids to emulate." His growing family travels quite often. They aren't perfect--no one is--but they certainly aren't boring, and neither are their kids.