国家地理:为什么旅行是一项基本的人类活动(4)

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It's not the place that is special but what we bring to it and, crucially, how we interact with it. Travel is not about the destination, or the journey. It is about stumbling across "a new way of looking at things," as writer Henry Miller observed. We need not travel far to gain a fresh perspective.

特别的不是地点，而是我们观看它的角度，以及重要的是，我们与它互动的方式。旅行非关目的地或行程，而是如同作家亨利·米勒所说，旅行是关乎意外发现“观看事物的新方法。”而要获得新视角，其实毋须远行。

No one knew this better than Henry David Thoreau, who lived nearly all of his too-short life in Concord, Massachusetts. There he observed Walden Pond from every conceivable vantage point: from a hilltop, on its shores, underwater. Sometimes he'd even bend over and peer through his legs, marveling at the inverted world. "From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow," he wrote.

没有人比亨利·戴维·梭罗更明白这一点，他短暂的一生几乎都住在麻萨诸塞州康科德镇，从想象得到的各个观看位置--山顶、湖滨、水下--观察瓦尔登湖。有时他甚至弯下腰，从双腿间往后看，赞叹眼前的颠倒世界。他写道：“只要观看角度得宜，就能在每场风暴和当中的每滴雨水中看到彩虹。”

Thoreau never tired of gazing at his beloved pond, nor have we outgrown the quiet beauty of our frumpy, analog world. If anything, the pandemic has rekindled our affection for it. We've seen what an atomized, digital existence looks like, and we (most of us anyway) don't care for it. The bleachers at Chicago's Wrigley Field; the orchestra section at New York City's Lincoln Center; the alleyways of Tokyo. We miss these places. We are creatures of place, and always will be.

梭罗从未对凝视他心爱的湖感到厌倦，我们也仍能欣赏这个世界回归老派步调后的沉静之美。如果真要说，疫情甚至让我们重新爱上了这个真实世界。我们已经见识过孤立的数字化生活，而我们（至少大多数人）都觉得不怎么样。芝加哥瑞格利球场的观众席、纽约市林肯中心的交响乐乐池、东京的街头巷弄，我们想念这些地方。我们的生命与地方相连，这点绝对不会改变。

After the attacks of September 11, many predicted the end of air travel, or at least a dramatic reduction. Yet the airlines rebounded steadily and by 2017 flew a record four billion passengers. Briefly deprived of the miracle of flight, we appreciated it more and today tolerate the inconvenience of body scans and pat-downs for the privilege of transporting our flesh-and-bone selves to far-flung locations, where we break bread with other incarnate beings.

911恐怖袭击后，不少人预测航空旅游将走到尽头，或至少大幅萎缩。然而航空业却稳定复苏，到了2017年更创下高达40亿人次的载客纪录。我们在短暂地被剥夺飞行这份赠礼后变得更加珍惜，如今愿意忍受X光安检和搜身所带来的不便，就是为了享有飞到遥远国度与他人共进一餐的特权。