Conscious Choice: It’s Everywhere You Want to Be

March 2008 | From the Editor

It’s Everywhere You Want to Be

By Ritzy Ryciak

I have always thought of Seattle as a sexy, moody woman who is so intriguing and dynamic that no matter how much she drives you crazy, how dark she gets, how much she weeps (in many cases, on you) or how quickly her moods swing from sun to clouds to snow, you stick with her because she’s worth it. Her bright days erase the gloomy days from your mind, and even when the cheer has waned, she always gets you thinking. The ideas, perspectives and worlds existing within her make her utterly irresistible and irreplaceable.

In other words, for the majority of my days, Seattle truly is all the city that I need. Much of my contentment is due to the fact that this town is a pulsing aggregate of villages, ecosystems and cultures, all rolled into one. If and when I need to “get away,” nearby cityscapes always succeed in transporting me out of my at-home headspace and into the exotic: dining on dim sum in the International District, hiking through Discovery Park, buying fresh flowers at the Market or art browsing in Pioneer Square. Every nook of this city has a different flavor.

I am not diminishing the value of foreign travel, but I bring this up to suggest that sometimes all the adventure, sparkle and texture we crave can be found closer than we think.

This, of course, is the premise of our March feature “Choose Your Own Adventure”. While we don’t advocate that everyone stay put in Seattle, we do suggest that if you’re seeking altruistic and more meaningful travel, you might want to check out America’s backyard first.

“While teaching English in Africa, eco-trekking the Amazon rainforest or volunteering on a permaculture farm Down Under are all well and good, you don’t need a passport to combine traveling with giving back,” writes author Lynn Braz. “After all, to paraphrase one famous globe-trotter, when it comes to meaningful travel experiences, there’s no place like home.”

We highlighted eight American getaway destinations intended to get you thinking about nearby adventures and creative ways to give back while you are exploring. Whether these ideas inspire a domestic or foreign journey, I hope they spark some sort of vacation, rest your brain, quiet the mental chatter and provide a chunk of time to think grander thoughts.

Unfortunately, these, along with the other known benefits of taking time off, are a dying American tradition. Apparently, the US is the only industrialized nation without a law requiring vacation time. Today, only 14 percent of Americans take a vacation of two weeks or longer, and last year 43 percent of Americans did not take a single week off.

With stats like that, and our perplexing state of international and domestic affairs, I can’t help but wonder what the world would look like if we let ourselves work a little less and daydream a tiny bit more.

— Ritzy

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