Prompts for Travelers, Part 3

Questions for literal locomotion, and the perfume and/or poison of getting from A to B

This month, we’re on the move—and back with a 3rd annual (!) prompts list to accompany a season of traveling, or moments spent elsewhere (or maybe deliberately opting out of Big Summer Travel and doing your own thing?)

To “travel” doesn’t mandate a certain distance; or taking a plane to a bus to a ferry to an island; it doesn’t require proof of experience (though I do love a souvenir and wonder what your best one is...?)

To travel is to purposefully put yourself in some place or setting where you typically are not. To look around and not know where the light switch is. To anticipate something; anything! To pack a bag, even if it only holds a half-melted lip balm and an emergency ziploc of dry roasted almonds.

If you’re new here, in seasons past I’ve shared sets of prompts centered around traveling, which you can revisit here and here. These earlier installments mostly focus around: (1) The headspace we enter while we’re somewhere new and/or decidedly out of our element. (2) The return voyage and the ways we try to corroborate our traveling selves with “real” life.

For round three, I started writing in the middle of a 12-hour flight. The bald man across the aisle had gotten flagged in a random security check and was ramped up to an 11 on the meltdown scale. Meanwhile, the woman in front of him was dressed in a full pajama set, face mask on, sleep-talking before takeoff.

In other words, traversing from A to B can be perfume or poison, and this month’s prompts consider travel through the lens of literal locomotion: the packing, the transit, the waiting, the logistics, the bumps in the road…

These below are edited with a trip in mind…so buckle up baby and let’s begin.

1. COMPULSIVE WANDERER VS. DRIFT AVERSE 

Does the lyric “life is a highway, I want to ride it all night long” fill you with freedom or dread? What is your relationship with the desire to retreat?