Travel Like a Poet and Take a Sensory Odyssey

A GUIDEBOOK TO LEARNING HOW TO SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TOUCH, AND TASTE LIKE A TRUE POET WHEN YOU JOURNEY

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As you scuttle to and fro back home or on getaways among the throngs this winter and beyond — hightailing it along interstates; or flying above titian crags and sun-gilded prairies; or slowly rowing across a mercurial lake; or sitting on a Greyhound bus that stops every 4 miles (only 982 miles to go!); or rattling into a time-warp sleep on a passenger train; or clinging for dear life on the metallic saffron-hued top of a freight train boxcar because you wanted to save a pretty penny; or walking to your family’s house because you decided to be healthy, only to arrive four days later because they live 78 miles away, long after the leftover potatoes have been eaten — certainly you’ll get bored.

After all, infrastructure, with it erasure of natural landscapes and infusion of artificial hubs, signage, and paths, can induce a mental lethargy over the long distances and tenures of “along the way.” But during each journey, if you learn to look, listen, sniff, graze, and taste creatively — if you learn to perceive the sensory smorgasbord of passing environs like a real-life-real-live poet — you can come to appreciate the “getting to” almost as much as the destination where hot coffee, a soft floral patterned quilt, and a room with a view awaits. It’s time to poeticize the prosaic experience of travel and peregrinate like a poet on an ancient odyssey.

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