Beware the Curmudgeon in Us All
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David and I are both Bill Bryson fans. You know Bill Bryson, most notable these days as the author of the book A Walk in the Woods which became a movie in 2015 starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. We love his writing and thoroughly appreciate his humor. Lately, however, after reading a few of his books, e.g. Neither Here Nor There, The Road to Little Dribbling and The Lost Continent, we’ve come to the conclusion that he’s become a curmudgeon and we fear we might be a bit ‘curmudgeon-y’, too, at times.
Criticizer, hypercritic, faultfinder, grouch … yup, that’s curmudgeonly behavior … never satisfied with where you are, nor what you see, and unable to find any unique, favorable aspects of a place or its people or its culture … which really is the reason we travel in the first place.
Bill Bryson traveled throughout Europe and barely found any place to his liking except Rome. He traveled extensively in the USA, 13,000+ miles in fact, and pretty much only Savannah and Charleston rated as even remotely worth visiting. Beyond finding fault with most of the places he visited, he also managed to insult most of the people, aka morons, who lived in those places, as well as the food, the lodging, the sights … well, pretty much everything.
He even disses the National Parks … poorly managed, poorly staffed, boring, too crowded, too commercial, too whatever. We sometimes find ourselves agreeing with him and then catch ourselves mid-chuckle … wait a minute, we love our national parks! (but we do hate the crowds and the tourists and the traffic). It’s easy to be persuaded by very witty, but negative comments.
Maybe this is what happens to world travelers and travel writers after awhile … they become so jaded that nothing impresses them and they seemingly no longer enjoy traveling. Paul Theroux is certainly this way and it seems so is Bill Bryson. They’ve traveled so extensively, seen so many wonders … that everything they see now pales in comparison. Perhaps they’re just bored with it all. One could argue that maybe traveling solo leads to a diminished appreciation of an experience that isn’t shared with someone, but then Steinbeck and Marco Polo didn’t seem to have a problem. Logically, if there is nothing left that pleases or appeals or inspires, perhaps it’s time to hang up your spurs and give up traveling.
We have tried over our years of travel to find that ‘certain something’ about every place we’ve visited ... at least one, positive, singular aspect of a place that differentiates it from every other place. I admit that this is sometimes difficult. Colon, Panama, for example, the least favorite place we’ve ever visited, does not lend itself to positive commentary. That said, we did find some very interesting fabric shops there … places where the Kuna women shop for their molas and it is at the entrance to the Panama Canal and, though you take your life into your hands, it has some poignant sights to see.
The fabric shops were colorful.
Downtown Colon was depressing, but a poignant reminder of its former grandeur.
We realize that because we’ve been fortunate to travel extensively, we too are sometimes jaded in our opinions of certain places. We try to remember that though a particular attraction is not all that spectacular to us, it is many times the pride and joy of the locals ... the Chamarel Seven Colored Earth in Mauritius comes to mind. It was touted by the locals as ‘one of the natural wonders of the world’ and as spectacular as our Yellowstone Park. Perhaps as a result of it being so over-hyped we found it to be a disappointment - it was nice, but certainly not outstanding. It was congested, small and expensive, yet we were still glad we visited.
Chameral … colorful? yes, but surely not one of the natural wonders of the world.
It’s important, I guess, to be truthful. Not every place is knock-your-socks-off beautiful. We tend to leave our rose-colored glasses at home. But surely, there has to be some redeeming feature of every place you visit. It’s natural that some places astound and others disappoint. We prefer astonishment, but we also work hard at not being disappointed if a place isn’t quite what we expected it to be.
So far, while we don’t always find that everything totally amazes and astounds us, we’re still able to find interesting things pretty much wherever we go. Maybe we’re two of Bill Bryson’s morons who just don’t know any better and think what we’re seeing is wonderful when in actuality, it’s dull, boring and uninspiring OR maybe it’s time Bill focused more on his wonderful history related books like A Short History of Nearly Everything or One Summer - America 1927, and give travel writing a break or perhaps, embrace the following quote:
“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”