Traveling

As much as I love Vermont, and it loves me, I love to travel outside of it. I travel to see the sights and visit all the places I can. I especially like to visit foreign countries. Flying across the bright blue sea that is the sky, seeing the trees fly by on a long drive, and watching the waves roll in as the boat follows them. It is a peaceful experience. Traveling is staying up until 6 a.m. for you to be tired enough to sleep through most of the ride. Traveling is waking up my parents when they sleep in. It’s the fresh cup of coffee along the way to wake us up. 

I have traveled far and wide across the United States of America. I visited the East Coast on a chilled February afternoon, collecting shells and wading through the tides. I have seen the West Coast on a sunny summer afternoon, eating lunch on the beach as my toes dig into the sand and a breeze brushes my hair back. 

I have visited the woods of the North, where it is best to drive cautiously. Otherwise, it's likely for you to hit or be hit by a deer prancing across the road to shelter. I have visited the South, riding upon the back of a horse in the desert, where the sun digs into your back, swerving between rocks to come across a ravine.

Foreign countries are foreign to me. Last year, during spring break, I went to Montreal for the first time since I was too young to remember. We visited Montreal’s Chinatown. It was a beautiful place. The main street was lined by petite bakeries with bright lights that displayed their baked goods. One Chinese bakery, in particular, was small but endlessly popular. People were everywhere, constricting the space, confining me, and increasing my anxiety. My anxiety was quelled by the sweet aromas of the sesame balls and the fresh scent of mango from the fruit pastries, which looked like little colorful pom-poms of flavor and fruit. It was an amazing experience that I wish to someday revisit. We walked back to our car with gusts of colder wind, rustling our hair, and the sun starting to fall to our right. 

Traveling is a movie you have time to watch in sync with another person. A movie you would never have watched otherwise. A movie to pass the time with. Traveling is the rumble of cars on the road, with the buzzing of cicadas supporting them as a symphony on a warm, sunny day under the blue sky. Traveling feels like a stomach drop while landing on a flight or driving down a steep hill. The drop of a stomach is like the drops of a rollercoaster, thrilling and sickening. Traveling tastes like sterile air in a plane cabin, fuzzy sodas, sickly sweet, yet you drink it all the same. Sodas that are cold but have no ice. Traveling is exotic, fun, and a way to spend time on this earth, visiting its corners.