Cydnie Perkins shares about the benefits of traveling around the country.
I open up the dating app to check today’s selection of available men. Their profiles start to blend together. Pictures in front of ancient ruins, majestic skylines and beaches untouched by pollution. Their ideal partner “loves to travel,” or, better yet, “loves to explore other cultures”—a longer-winded way of saying “travel.”
When we meet, they inevitably bring up travel. I list some places I’ve been recently (all domestic) and they ask, a little confused, “Oh, okay, but have you ever traveled overseas?”
The implication is clear: international travel is the only travel that counts. I’m not opposed to traveling internationally. I’ve done it, and it’s wonderful. But I can’t help giving a little side-eye to born-and-bred Americans who flash their passport stamps but haven’t spent much time getting to know their own country.
America is enormous, with an almost absurd range of geography, people, food, architecture, and history: from the Louisiana bayou to the mountains of Appalachia, from Native communities in the Southwest to the streets of New York City. So many places within our borders that can feel worlds apart. Understanding America should be part of understanding the world.
How can we confidently declare that somewhere else is richer, poorer, friendlier, stranger, more beautiful, or more culturally interesting if our understanding of America ends at our own region?
And how can we accurately assess our own locality—especially one as unusual as the Bay Area—until we step outside of it and look back in? So yes, travel internationally. See the ruins. Pose on the rock. Take the spontaneous trip to Thailand. But maybe take a road trip through your own country, too. With a Perspective, I’m Cydnie Perkins.
Cydnie Perkins splits her time between Berkeley and Sacramento, where she works in public affairs.