The Power of Place – The Taucker Travel Blog

Buckminster Fuller, the genius who invented the geodesic dome and coined the term “Spaceship Earth,” traveled so much that he wore three watches. He wore one on each wrist and carried a vest pocket watch. One told the time where he was currently. Another told the time at his next destination. And the third told the time at his home base in Carbondale, Illinois.

Bucky traveled almost constantly, lecturing wherever he was invited around the world. He was a great believer in the value of travel. He believed we are born to travel by nature, by our evolution. We are adapted to it as a species, built for it. And human history would sure vouch for the idea that travel is an inherent part of human nature.

“Human beings were born with legs, not roots,” he said.

I have no doubt that his extensive traveling helped him to form the whole earth perspective that led him to so many remarkable discoveries.

I share his belief in the importance of travel for human beings. I am a passionate, lifelong lover of travel, but I do admit to a strong lazy streak. And the longer I stay in one place, the stronger it gets.

I like to sit around about as much as anyone. There’s a part of me that wants to sit on the couch and not be bothered by anything. That tends to be my first response to any invitation or requirement to go anywhere. It’s just inertia, the basic animal impulse of not wanting to be disturbed.

Don’t get me wrong, staying in one place can be great. I love to savor the experience of being settled. Staying put can be very positive, for resting, restoring, contemplating, or accomplishing things. But after a long time staying in one place, stagnation starts to slip in. Everyone needs a break sometimes.

It’s not always easy to know when the time is right to break the cycle and go traveling. But when I do find myself traveling again, even short distances or to places I have been many times, I am always surprised at the powerful effect of just changing places. I am reminded again of the danger of stagnation from staying in one place for too long at a time.

I think we tend to underestimate how much power the place where we are located has over us. Having grown up in American culture, I’m proud of my sense of individualism. I’m no conformist, I tell myself, no mere leaf in the wind, controlled by elements of society or my environment. But when I change my environment and go someplace different, I am surprised by how much I feel changed.

And it’s not only that I feel different, though feeling good is itself sufficient reason to travel.  But when I am in a different place, I really am different. An objective observer could see that I actually behave differently in a new environment.

We are each the center of our own universe, and it’s natural to think of ourselves as larger in the scheme of things than we really are. A human being is a very small part of the earth. Even our mightiest mountains are barely visible in pictures of the earth from space. We are tiny particles on the surface of a relatively large planet. We are small compared to the forces that envelop us.

Have you ever seen the way iron filings all line up to point toward a magnet? When I was in grade school I had a goofy toy called “Wooly Willy.” It consisted of a piece of cardboard printed with a face that was entirely hairless and beardless. Through a clear plastic covering you could pick up iron filings with a magnetic stylus, drag them over and drop them on the face, to make a moustache or a beard, or hair on the head. It was silly, but fun for a fourth grader. I was fascinated by the way the iron filings would snap to attention and line up when you brought the magnet near them. It gave me a metaphor for how tiny we human beings are in relation to the earth’s gravity and other elements of nature.

When I travel, I get a sense of the vast scale of the earth, the mountains and oceans, the forests and the cities, and all the things I see. In comparison, I am tiny. I am humbled. I feel like one of those iron filings, just a tiny thing among those vast entities and forces, held firmly in place by gravity. I am not independent of them. On the contrary, I am greatly influenced by all of the things that surround and envelop me.

When I stare at a great mountain peak, it is undeniable that it is much greater than I am. It is millions of times vaster in size, and has endured for millions of years. I will feel different in that place, in sight of that mountain, than in any other, because of the power of that place.

When in Rome, I really do “do as the Romans do,” to some degree anyway. We are greatly moved and affected by our environments. Wherever I am, I retain my own individuality, but I also become part of the place, and I am different in that place than when I’m at home.

Traveling also changes the way you feel and behave because you have a different attitude when you are traveling. Knowing that you are in a new place and that you will make many discoveries there makes you more alert than when you go through the day assuming that you’ve seen already everything already, so you don’t really pay attention.

The fact that we are different people when we are in different places underlines to me the value and importance of travel. It helps me understand my place in the world, to connect and feel that I am part of something larger than myself.

Your humble reporter,

Colin Treadwell