But I didn't want to limit myself to the travel habits of Emily Dickinson, who insists, "There is no frigate like a book." I wanted to get out of the United States and experience another landscape, another culture.
At the time, Brigham Young University offered travel study in England, Vienna and Jerusalem. This was a tough choice, since these cities all had great benefits for me. London was particularly tempting since I was an English major. In addition, I had many ancestors who hailed from the United Kingdom.
I quickly chose Jerusalem, focusing on its significance to three of the major world religions. Also, I was awed by how it had a much older history than London or Vienna.
So just a few days after turning 20, I embarked on a six month travel study with a group of nearly 100 other students. We lived primarily in the most southern extreme of Jerusalem, at Ramat Rachel. But we traveled throughout the region. Our studies included a week working on a banana plantation, Degania Alef and about five days travel in Egypt--Cairo and Luxor.
I got to swim in the Red, the Dead and the Med. I walked through Hezekiah's tunnel, crawled through caves near Hebron, waded in streams near the Sea of Galilee, and in many other ways made close contact with the landscape. I was usually covered with a fine layer of dirt from some part of the region, especially since we didn't have access to washing machines or dryers. We had to wash our own clothes in the showers at Ramat Rachel. But the histories of the landscape drew my attention away from my dusty attire.
Tel Be'er Sheva
I knew that Jerusalem had deep roots. However, I wasn't prepared for how deeply I felt the age of that city. I grew up in Orange County, California, where most of the buildings were constructed in the 1950s. True, many of the Spanish missions in California boasted construction dates in the late 18th Century.But I soon learned that California is an adolescent compared to many other places in the world. When my classmates and I first entered Jerusalem from the airport in Tel Aviv, it was night. The bus stopped across from the Temple Mount.
I was extremely sleepy from the long flight from the States. However, I distinctly remember feeling dwarfed by the moment. I was a mere dot on the timetables of history.
Here was a city that had buildings dating back several centuries before my lifetime. I could sense the millions of people who had lived, traveled, loved, studied, fought, and died there over the centuries. And millions more who have read, written and sung about this land by only visiting it in their imagination.
On the one hand, I felt very small, young and insignificant during my time there. On the other hand, I also felt cosmically connected to something much larger than myself, my own traditions and my own understanding of the world. Not only did I feel a reverence for the Divine Force, I felt a reverence for all of humanity--for peoples of all time, cultures, races and traditions. I could sense how we are all striving in or own way, in our own time, and in our own place.
Decades later, I read Geraldine Brook's novel, People of the Book. While set in many landscapes where Christians, Jews and Muslims have coexisted--and not just in Jerusalem--Brooks captures in part the feeling I experienced during my travel study.
When I returned to California in June of 1982, I felt a real loss. The newness of my surroundings seemed ridiculous, tinny, fleeting. People were concerned about maintaining their cars, their tanned and toned bodies, and their lush front lawns. And I wept as I took my clothes out of the dryer only to find all traces of that ancient soil removed.
This post is part of a blog hop. Monday morning, July 15, there will be links embedded in thumbnails below, jumping to other posts on the same topic: transformative travel.