Thinking of Stonehenge in Manhattan

The past four weeks have taken me from Bath to London to New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—leaving me with just enough time to catch my breath. Among the hustle and bustle, I had a few parting thoughts that have stuck with me about a small day trip we did in England, thoughts which are broadly pertinent to travel and living generally.

Shortly before leaving the UK, we went to Stonehenge and it brought me back to a younger self who was just beginning to discover the world. Up to the very day we went, I had doubts about whether to make the trip over. It is a busy time as we approached the end of our visit to Bath. Lots of travel awaited, and as travel accumulates in my past and future, I begin to enjoy static moments more and more.

Nonetheless, the clutter of logistics, work, and everyday tasks can also cloud vision. In the end, how could I not go? The site was less than two hours away and there are no guarantees I will ever have the chance to see it again. The awareness of a present both fleeting and latent with possibility is something that has always characterized my outlook on life. And yet, there are so many forces in our every day that increasingly try to obscure the value of experiencing, living, contemplating. Deciding to go to Stonehenge was a reassertion that each day and each minute is not to be taken for granted.

Beyond the inertia of banality, there is also cynicism: why go? Isn't it just an overhyped commercialized sort of place? These are the whispers and judgements that try to chip away at the value of something because it is too popular, too well-known. I know that my younger self was nearly deaf to this type of cynicism. After being denied mobility and possibility for so long, the inherent of value of discovering and exploring and learning and experiencing seemed too obvious. It is this instinct that has driven me to go rogue on trip itineraries, like that time I refused to leave Istanbul without visiting the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. Today, I am proud that at sixteen I had the foresight to do that; I haven't been back to Istanbul since.

In Walker Percy's "Loss of Creature", the author reflects on how modern everyday institutions, such as school or mass tourism, and the expectations we develop as a result of being embedded in them, alienate us from that which we wish to encounter and access. Percy toys with ideas on how to reclaim experience, eluding cliché, disappointment, and cynicism. Growing up, the inherent value of these special experiences revealed itself to me as an obvious contrast to the relative scarcity, constraint, and struggle I had had to live through. As my access to the world has swelled, have I lost sight of this?

The special feeling that still springs within, whether at the foot of Stonehenge or on the crisscrossing streets of Manhattan, makes me think not. I still feel like the luckiest person in the world, just like when I saw the rising domes of the mosques in Istanbul or the black sand volcanic beaches of Guadeloupe—and even if I have to make a greater effort to tear down some of the societal pressures and expectations that adult life has brought with it.

- Andrea