William Least Heat-Moon on why we travel

“Why do we, for a spell, trade the security and comfort of a familiar place for the liberty offered by an unfamiliar space, a swap of domestic fixity for freedom of the open road? Even if we go as tourists, where there and then dominate the peregrination — rather than going like travelers, who each moment try to embrace the challenge of the here and now — don’t we usually set out motivated by curiosity of one degree or another? (A tourist, of course, may grow into a deeper traveler just as a journeyman sawyer becomes a master wheelwright; and further, all travelers, even the most awakened, are at times forced into mere tourism.) When we go on a visit (related to the word view), what may we hope to see (related to seek)? And what happens within us when seeing develops into seeking that encourages further seeing? Is such questioning not among the highest orders of human inquiry?”

–William Least Heat-Moon, Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories from the Road (2013)