Travel Log: Family Dance Through the American West (Series Intro)

American Badlands. Photo credit: Guy Podjarny

Driving through the Badlands of the West US, the teenagers listening to music on their headphones, the desert unfolding before us like curtains of sand and rock, I thought about the rhythm of travel and how it had changed for us over the years. The sun rose higher and hotter. The road stretched straight ahead, and it got me thinking that in life, you usually only see the road you travelled after you traversed it.

I’m an anxious person, but I get even more anxious before we travel. The thing about anxiety, though, is that if you do the thing you’re worried about and none of your worst-case scenarios materialise, that’s another piece of evidence to use when you’re trying to calm your anxiety. And if you have that documented somewhere, say a blog post, then you can re-read those posts and remind your brain that everything will probably be ok.

I’ve been writing travel logs since 2018. My travel anxiety has subsided significantly since then, both because I have more tools to deal with it and because we’ve done so much travelling that I have plenty of evidence: remember when we went to the other side of the world with young kids and nothing bad happened? Or better yet, remember when you sat on the tarmac with a baby and a toddler for three hours between the first flight of eight hours and the second of five hours, and you survived?

Travelling with young children is understandably anxiety-inducing. Travelling with teenagers presents challenges of its own, but at least you don’t have to know exactly where you’ll be at one o’clock for the mid-day nap. The rhythm of the travel changes.

Our teenagers grew to be proficient travellers. We now usually travel with a carry-on suitcase and a backpack each, although, for this trip, we had to bring a couple of suitcases due to the temperature difference between Las Vegas (nearly 30 degrees) and Yosemite Valley (still snow in places). They know how the airport works. They download their own music, podcasts, and movies for flights and road trips. They pack their own chargers. They’re also more involved in the planning of the trip. For this trip, they voted for a road trip through the Badlands instead of a short domestic flight.

When we started travelling more seriously with the children, around 2018, I was still a student looking for the right answer. I planned meticulous itineraries and thought that ticking all the landmarks indicated a successful trip. Since then, I’ve developed a more nuanced way of looking at travelling with my family. It’s no longer about me getting the right answer (the right hotel, the right restaurant, the right hiking trail).

For me, travelling with the young people is about our family dance. The rhythm of the dance changes when we travel. It brings out the worst and the best in us, and I now see family trips as an opportunity to get to know each other better, to witness each other’s worst and best, and to accompany each other on the journey. I've learned to expect that we won't all want to do the same thing at the same time: one teenager wants to order room service, the other wants to go out, and the parents want an hour to themselves. What has changed over the years is the way we solve these little conflicts. I’ve learnt that the point isn’t to find the solution that pleases everyone—the right hotel, the right restaurant, the right hiking trail. What matters is that we listen to each other, that we respect each other’s wants and needs. The destination doesn’t matter as much as the journey itself.

My travel writing has also evolved. Whereas in 2018, I thought the point was specific itineraries and how to travel with young children, I realised since that this isn’t what I’m most interested in. I’m more interested in the experiences that travel affords. As a result, what I focus on when I write my travel logs changed.

This year, I want to try a series of posts that would focus more on the experiences and thoughts I had while we were travelling. In the next five posts, I’ll write about topics like the tension between art and money in Las Vegas, the human insignificance that we experience when confronted with forces of nature like The Grand Canyon, and lessons on healing from some of the oldest living creatures on earth: sequoia trees. And I invite you to come on this journey with me through the American West.