On the Road to... Something

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Thoughts on 28N 12W:

The Degree Confluence Project and Why We Travel

On the Road to… Something

It is easy to follow the beaten path. It leads to a place that is comfortable and known. There are not many surprises, and leisure and rest are almost guaranteed; it comes for the most part, expected. For the average American, the idea of ‘travel’ might mean vacationing at luxurious resorts close to the equator, where their biggest worry consists of which fruity drink to have poolside. But what is off the beaten path anymore? Is there a place that is unique, that can be exotic without being commercialized? In an age of consumption and consumerism is there anything that is truly traditional, anything that hasn’t been influenced by one of the largest sources of money for many countries, tourism. Why do some yearn for this ‘authentic’ experience, to feels the slums and consume custom.

Jonathon Stray explores these issues like his fellow travelers in his piece 28N 12W, a part of the Degree Confluence Project, where writes about his desire to journey to 28N 12W in Morocco. Alex Jarrett, the mastermind behind the Degree Confluence Project, describes the venture as “an organized sampling of the world” (Degree Confluence Project). But why would anyone want to travel to an integer degree point of latitude and a longitude? What is there? Who cares? Jarrett states that, one of the initial questions he proposed concerning the project was whether anyone else would acknowledge a convergence of latitude and longititude as unique. Volunteers post pictures and narratives, like Stray’s that describe their journey to the confluence. Each person’s reasons for going are different. Some live near them, some travel far distances. Some people write a vague description of the area with plenty of simple data, like which railway it is near. Others, like Stray chose to explain. Maybe it was because he was searching for something.

Travel writing demands an explanation. It describes a purpose, a meaning, or the process of a traveler and depicts their journey, physically and mentally to and through a destination much like Stray. People travel to many places for countless reasons. Pico Iyer said that “we travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves” (Iyer, Why We Travel). How does travel make us discover become, how does it allow us to access a part of ourselves that otherwise would go untapped? These questions have been asked, debated, celebrated, but more or less unanswered. Stray takes the reader with him on his trek to the 28N 12W confluence. To read about his journey visit http://confluence.org/confluence.php?id=2867

Stray tells us that he is in search of a new way to see the world. He wants a different way to see the world. Like Iyer, Stray feels as though “travel, for many of us, is a quest for not just the unknown, but the unknowing; I, at least, travel in search of an innocent eye that can return me to a more innocent self” (Iyer 4). Then he begins to describe his search for a topographical map of the region. He toils with the idea of what his journey is actually for. He states that “This is all somewhat pointless, but strangely enough, it’s real exploration” (Stray).

Nonetheless, the details Stray gives us help to set the tone for the piece, a technique that can be applied in all writing, especially travel writing. Throughout the piece, Stray is looking for a sense of uniqueness, a distinctive the goal of the Confluence Project. He wanted something exotic, but not the type that a guidebook would offer, with plenty of people having the same exact experience that he did. Stray shared this same thought with Iyer, who discusses the difference between tourists and travelers; Stray belongs to the latter. Iyer says that the true difference between the tourists and travelers “lies between those who leave their assumptions at home and those who don’t: among those who don’t, a tourist is just someone who complains, ‘Nothing here is the way it is at home,’ while a traveler is one who grumbles, ‘Everything here is the same as it is in Cairo-or Cuzco, or Katmandu.’ It’s all very much the same” (Iyer 2).

What Stray is describing is a common sentiment among “travelers”. He desires for something unique, to visit a place and be submersed in the native’s culture. Travelers like this want to see the traditional dances in their ‘natural habitat’, not in the middle of a hotel lobby. They want to become immersed in something other than what is normal to them. But tourism has become a major industry, especially in Morocco. It is now how many people make their livings, depending on well-off westerners to spend money on their goods or services. So who are we to judge that exhuming what we call traditional is not unique and a nature transition into modern culture.

In some ways I am searching for what Stray and Iyer for. Something. Nothing in particular, just the anticipation. But why does one travel to the middle of nowhere, where rocky plains and small towns are the only things for miles in order to feel something? What is the incessant need to be unique in the fact that we have visited somewhere exotic where no one else has gone? There might not be one specific answer, but it is a question traveler and travel writers have been toying with since people starting moving from homestead to the exotic.

“Yet for me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle” (Iyer).

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