When I was growing up in the 1950s and early 60s I was an obsessive reader. One of my favorite subjects was travel, and I became fascinated by countries I considered “exotic” (definitely meat for a kid from a small town on the border of Newark, New Jersey). I daydreamed about Tibet and Machu Picchu (both of which I would eventually reach). And, although I knew that I had to withstand my mom’s deep anxiety, I began to travel on my own as soon as I saved up money from a series of low-level summer and part-time jobs.
I traveled through college, and after I graduated I would work until I could afford cheap plane fare and just take off, rarely planning where I would stay or exactly where I would go. I would arrive back in New York City exhausted and exhilarated, knowing that I accomplished what I set out to do—meet and talk to people from different cultures, hike crowded cities and snow-covered mountains, and often find inspiration to live a different life when I returned.
So when I hit 71 and was laid off from my 25-year career in publishing, I felt the itch again. I had traveled in the intervening years, often alone but sometimes with my husband or my daughter, but they couldn’t travel when I could and didn’t want to go where I did. Years had passed since I hopped on a plane alone: now I had bad knees, a few illnesses, and my house keys often ended up in places I was certain they could never be.
For the first time, I began to contemplate taking a group tour. At first the idea filled me with horror: I was not one of those people who were transported like herds on buses, kvetching about the food, name-tagged and leisure-clothes clad. Yes, I had my prejudices.
But aging has been a series of revelations—from walking into a chair yoga class and realizing that the elderly folks there were my age to having people give me a seat on the subway almost every time. I began to understand that if I wanted to travel on my own and get to the places I wanted to see, group travel might be worth a try. So I signed up for an educational tour to the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota, far from my usual destinations to Europe or Asia or beyond.
Within the first few days of the trip I felt my teeth ache when people expressed opinions that irritated or amused me and whose tastes were miles from mine. I had to wear a name tag, and I sat on the bus for hours a day, watching the rain through the windows, only leaving the bus to tour a historic site or museum.
But then things changed. I think that—because I was older and hopefully able to move past my initial reactions—I began to really appreciate the people in the group. Many of them were smart, feisty, interested in the world and where we were traveling. One elderly woman walked with two canes, and she was the most ambitious and unstoppable of us all. A series of speakers covered subjects that interested me: native American culture, the arts, and history. Others talked about areas that I never would have researched: geology, paleontology, mining, science, and cattle farming. I learned so much.
In the end, I was hugging two nuns on the bus, laughing with a woman from Portland whose life is totally the opposite of mine and with whom I am permanently bonded, and talking about everything from the high and lows of bison meat to the real stories behind the myths of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. Can’t say that I will be a regular, but I can’t rule out that it won’t happen again. I do know that I want to grow and change as I age and to be open to new paths. In some ways, it may be just as exciting and satisfying as it was for my 25-year-old self, lighting out for the territories.
Photo: Barbara on a snowy May Day in the Black Hills of South Dakota wearing a Hagon Pro travel poncho.
Hagon PRO Travel Poncho Available on Amazon Prime—-it worked great for me in South Dakota!