Back on the Road Again

There haven't been many great road novels since Jack Kerouac set out On the Road and Richard Brautigan took us Trout Fishing in America—none, at least, that inspired the same kind of wanderlust and curiosity about America's back roads and byways.

But is that really a bad thing? With global warming and pollution spurred on by fossil fuel combustion and oil companies pillaging our most pristine wilderness areas for oil to satiate our growing gasoline needs, it's getting harder to justify loading up the car—or revving up the jet engines—without carrying around extra baggage full of eco guilt.

Alan Durning, executive director of the environmental non-profit Sightline Institute, wanted to unload some of that guilt when he embarked on a year of living car-lessly (and he continues to live that way, 5 months after his experiment ended). Despite being free of four wheels, he and his family worked in a few vacations, his favorite being a week spent...without traveling at all. Rather than taking a train or renting a car, they stayed at home and became tourists in their hometown of Seattle.

"The rules were that we were we were on vacation, so no chores and none of the home improvement projects that usually take up our time off," he says. They picked a different neighborhood each day of the week, hitting parks and museums and eating at new restaurants. They even discovered a nearby museum they’d never visited that, at the time, was hosting a Maya Lin exhibit; the excursion was a vacation highlight for his kids. “It turned out to be really cool,” he says. Aside from the obvious benefits—time with his family, more money to spend on fun things to do, very few greenhouse gas emissions—there was one other.  “We didn’t have to pack,” he jokes.

Durning's foray into local travel highlights an often ignored aspect of eco tourism: learning all there is to know of a particular locale and supporting its economy. Pauline Kenny and her husband Steve Cohen grew tired of the "10 cities in 10 days" type of trips and started booking long-term vacation rentals wherever they went, spending weeks at a time in one city, lingering in local cafes and strolling through neighborhoods. They later coined the term "Slow Travel," which means taking the time to develop a sense of place rather than hitting all the touristy hot spots. "Our type of travel slows you down and lets you have more fun," Kenny says.

Even though Kenny and Cohen favor spending time abroad, you can still adopt slow travel ideals without traveling far, or for very long. And if you don't live in a city as vibrant as Seattle, there are enough unique and diverse attractions in the U.S. that you're bound to find one close to home, where you can leave the extra gas, the pounds of carbon dioxide and your duffel bag full of eco guilt.