What is travel now?

    If you're like most wanderlusters, you're tired of being cooped up. You want to travel. You want to explore. You want to live. Over the course of the past 18 months or so, you have probably grown ill from not being able to travel freely like we've grown so accustomed to. While it hasn't been impossible to travel since the start of the pandemic, it has made travel extremely difficult. Travelling during this period had become such an arena of stress and misinformation that a vast majority of nomads had done something that went against the very fiber of their being: we stayed put. Now whether or not that was a result of our own choices or various governments deciding that for us is up for conversation, but here we've been in a monumental time in humanity where we simply didn't explore. Some of us picked up new hobbies, some of us bought property for a "home-base," some of us binge-watched every last episode of our favorite travel shows, some of us stayed in denial, and some of us found every possible way to make an adventure out of, what prior to the pandemic we'd consider, nothing.

    Now that things appear to be "re-opening" and more information seems to be available for when/where you can/cannot go, people are on the move once again! The new question is this, "what does travel look like now?" Let's say this much, travel is now:

• face masks
• hand sanitizer
• tests
• double checking entry requirements
• internet searches for current case outbreaks
• researching location restrictions
• AND...trying your hardest not to cough or sneeze in public

    Travel now doesn't need to have more purpose or reason behind it. Travel now just needs to be more valued, more cherished. Travel is what fulfills certain people beyond literary explanation. Others think we're crazy or irrational, when in reality we're just quenching our soul's thirst. Travel now is, for this wanderluster, something I will remind myself to never take for granted again. Whether it's our human right or a citizen's privilege, we aren't always guaranteed when or where our next great adventure will take place so please, take that extra picture...buy that ridiculous souvenir, talk to the person behind that smile passing by, pause for a moment and realize: we're all in this together.