January 2004 Issue - Essay # 2
Moments
of Travel
By
Courtney Knowlton
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"Think
of the long trip home. “Questions of Travel” (lines 13-29) by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
Standing,
wearing a long skirt, in a circle with some fellow Americans and many
Masai warriors, women, and children, I watched what was going on in the
center, but also what was going on around me. 'What right do I have to be
here?' I wondered. These people with the darkest skin I had ever seen
dressed in the most vibrant red and decorated with the most intricate
beads were like actors. I tried and tried to tell myself that this was
their life, and I was lucky to be included in it for this weekend. The
hot, African sun and the herds of cattle and goats that surrounded us
were just part of the scene in what felt like the “strangest
theatre.” I asked over and over again if it was right for us to be
just staring in awe as the women, whose exposed breasts drooped with the
weight of nursing babies, harassed us to buy what they had made. Was it
right to try and wipe the flies out of the children’s oozing eyes?
Somehow it seemed as though we were intruding on these people and on
their lives, but I wanted nothing more than to be there, absorbing it
all: the smells, the colors, the heat, the dust, the language, the
activity. ********** I
was traveling through Peru and Bolivia with my best friend from high
school; we were on a total high because we could not believe that our
parents had allowed us to take this trip. I was eighteen and she was
nineteen, and we were alone in South America. We had exactly that
“breath of life” that made us “rush to see the sun the other way
around.” As we crossed the equator we were giddy in our airplane
seats. It would all, without a doubt, be new and different and that was
all we wanted. Planning
our trip we had decided that we had to go to Lake Titicaca. We had been
told it was beautiful, but we were going more so that we could say that
we had been to the largest lake, at the highest elevation in the world.
Had the “tiniest green humming bird in the world” been there we
would have spent all night on a bus just to see it. We laughed at
ourselves and asked just what Bishop does. What makes us need to see
these things? The allure of saying that we have seen them or, maybe, the
fact that they are “always, always delightful”? But then we ran off
to Machu Picchu, the ultimate “inexplicable old stonework”--and how
we stared… ********** Sitting
around a campfire while a beautiful, lanky man with a Teva-tan played
the guitar, I felt chills run through my body as our entire group sang
out Bob Dylan’s “Shelter From the Storm.” We all knew all the
words, and we all knew that this month in the woods would soon end. We
had seen and done so much. Our bodies were brown, both from the sun and
from the dirt, and toned from trekking to summits of the Colorado 14ers,
where we were always met with a different, more perfect, but just
as delightful view. We were dreaming our dreams and having them, too. We
felt on top of the world as we marched on above the trees and above the
clouds. And our voices rang out to the mountains as we belted our
favorite verse: Suddenly
I turned around and she was standin' there The
sun went down and we watched it go. We were warm from the fire, from
each other, and from that “folded sunset” that enveloped us. We knew
that there would always be room for another moment like this one. As
her poem continues, Bishop answers her questions as she discusses all
the images it “would have been a pity” to have missed. And I recall
my own. A leopard sunning herself on a rock, the sun rising over the
Serengeti. The voices of children speaking, or even better, singing, in
Swahili, Spanish, and perfect British English. Cartwheeling on the
largest salt flat in the world just because we were there and no one
else was, and it was beautiful and endless and the blue hit the white in
a way that could only happen in Bolivia. Swimming in the muddy Amazon
with pink dolphins and bathing in a frigid Colorado stream only to come
out no cleaner than before I jumped in. Bishop
understands the need for these experiences and how sad it would have been
if they were not a part of her, of us: And
never to have listened to the rain Bishop
writes her thoughts on travel, and I have written mine, but she has
captured them in poetry. I have been a reader all my life and it is rare
that a work can capture exactly what you are thinking, have thought, or
experienced. Usually, I read and learn about other people’s ideas or
experiences, but reading this poem I wished that I had written it. I read
it once and understood it. It was written for me, to me, about me. All I
wanted to do was call my mom, for she is the ultimate reader. The only
thing that gives her more pleasure than reading something she loves is
when one of her children reads something that they love. “Mom,
I just read the most amazing poem. I typed it out and e-mailed it to you.
You have to go read it.” “Oh,
sweetie, I can’t wait. I’ll go read it right now. What’s it
called?” “It’s
by Elizabeth Bishop. It’s called ‘Questions of Travel.’” I am met
with a silence. She does not answer me for seconds. “I just got chills,” she said. “My freshman year in college I copied that poem into the front cover of my journal and swore that I would live by it. I never wanted to just stay home.”
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Author's Biography Courtney
Knowlton of Montclair, New Jersey, is a senior at Amherst College in Amherst,
Massachusetts. E-mail
Courtney at ccknowlton@amherst.edu
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Essay
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