What Makes a "Traveler"

and some gossip from my life

Friends,

A few years ago, my sister and I were debating the meaning of the word “traveler.” I advocated for the dictionary definition: A traveler is one who travels—even one who travels rarely.

When I teach travel writing, I tell my students it doesn’t matter if their passport pages are blank. I tell them that writing about their hometowns counts as travel writing. Writing about their hometowns is, in fact, the most ethical travel writing—no encroaching on others; no “parachute journalism”; the lightest possible carbon footprint.

My sister argued that a traveler must possess the traveler spirit—the passion, the wanderlust, the feverish urge to paraglide.

We started Roladexing through everyone we knew, dissecting their travel tendencies. Are you a traveler if your job frequently sends you to Orlando or Houston or Phoenix?

Absolutely not, my sister said.

What about our cousins who met up annually at Jazz Fest?

No! Travelers don’t fly to New Orleans over and over at the expense of new experiences.

What about that one woman who, at every opportunity, lay sprawled on the sand in Jamaica or Cancun?

Nope. She only frequented beach resorts; that woman was a mere vacationer.

The more my sister tried to illustrate her point, the more nebulous the criteria became.