Traveling writing is a league all of its own. It’s true life: The World through a Traveler’s
eyes. Every piece of writing is unique
and is filled with fear, laughter, adventure, reflection, and most importantly
detail. The most important part of
travel writing to the readers is the thrill. They
want to immerse themselves into your writing and ride the wave of your adventure
right alongside you. They want to feel
the thorns pulling at their own skin as they walk through the humid jungle with
you. They want to feel the frost bite
nipping at their noses while they are trying to sleep, in what is left of your
tent, with you. These thrill-seeking readers are looking for the next best travel that
they can get their hands on. Is this making the travel writers take it to the next
level? Are they competing for the next most outrageous trip?
Competition is in our lives daily.
We compete for jobs, for grades, even the best lunch seat in the Scherv.
I think that there is a thrill in travel writing for both the readers and the
writers. Looking back in time, the first
travelers such as Lewis and Clark, Christopher Columbus, Herodotus, to name a
few, are not only known as travelers but as renowned pioneers in history. Every traveler after them was trying to find
the next best destination. Is this
something that we are just programmed to do? History is showing us that the
next travel experience will always be better than the last.
I do think that competition is good for us as writers and as
readers. It allows us as writers to
develop new techniques of writing, new ways of traveling, and new ways of reflecting
to “one up” our competitors. As readers,
it allows us to push our beloved travel writers one more step to show us their thrills
and it allows us to keep searching for that next article that will finally fill
that need for adventure. This brings up
one more issue, is this bringing travel writers to push the envelope and try
dangerous trips. I don’t think so. Although these writers are travel junkies,
they are about what they can gain from their experience and what a particular
trip brings to them. I think they are
more concerned with the idea of reflection and awareness of where they are in a
particular moment of traveling. According
to Dave George in his article The New World of Travel Writing, “This world was
a reflection of me, of course, and of my thinking about my readership—but my
desire to engage, inform, and inspire that readership was what fueled my
editorial decisions each day.” We, as readers are what drive these writers to
continue their work, but their reflection of the world is what keeps them
traveling.
