How to Travel With Meaning

Traveling has been a way for us to live out some of our core values. It takes effort. But it’s worth it.

I was 19 years old when the plane landed in the high Andes mountains of Colombia. I didn’t know it at the time, but my life would never be the same.

I had been given an opportunity to live and study in Bogotá. I had grown up in the South and traveled with my family around the U.S. on summer vacations. I loved those trips, but I always yearned to explore a bigger world. Now I had a passport, and it was being stamped at a small airport in a place I had only seen on a globe.

For my friend, Errol, a similar recognition began on a road trip he took at about the same age with his friends to explore the Western U.S. As he hiked in the mountains, camped near clear waters and photographed wildlife, he realized that he was in a place that made him feel whole, and that traveling was a way to learn about who he was and what he valued.

Everybody has their own way of picking trips. For many people, it’s a city they’ve read about, an island they first heard of as a child. Sometimes for us, choosing a trip happens when a friend has recommended a journey that has sparked fascination and curiosity. And that can be a wonderful way to determine a destination; serendipity is an amazing thing.

But for me, travel is often something else. Ever since my trip to Bogotá, traveling has been a way to live out some of our core values, to touch something deep inside us.

I’ve never felt more strongly about that than today, as we think about the places we will go when we are able to get up and go again. Covid-19 has just reinforced our belief that there is more that unites people everywhere than divides us, and that we have so much to learn — about ourselves and others — by traveling with a purpose.

We would be the first to admit that our approach to traveling isn’t always easy. It takes a kind of self-reflection, and then connecting that assessment to travel in a way that may not be for everybody. It can be more time-consuming to plan.

But we hope that how we approach travel might help others find more meaning in at least some of their journeys — whether it’s around the corner or around the world.

How do we do it? How do we decide that of all the thousands of places we could visit, this is one we’ll find deeply fulfilling at this moment? We begin by asking ourselves a simple question designed to make us think hard about what we want out of life, and how travel can help us accomplish that goal.

Everybody will have their own questions, of course, but for us four of the most common are:

• What evokes awe in us and brings us deep joy?

• How can we keep learning new things about the natural world?

• How can we connect with and learn about and from others who are occupying this planet with us?

• What human-made objects inspire us?

To better understand how those broad questions lead us to a specific place, here’s a closer look at how we have answered those questions in the past — and the places those answers took us to.

What evokes awe in us and brings us deep joy?

Like all of our questions, this is a big one with many answers. And the answers may change over time. But one constant is experiencing natural beauty — the land, the sky, the forests, the desert.

That answer has taken us many places over the years. But one of the most memorable came in 2019.

I had been interested in the night sky since childhood. I have great memories of lying in the grass on summer nights and watching the stars. I had long been an avid backpacker, spending many nights staring up at the night sky, just as we did as children. I love learning about constellations and the stories surrounding them, which have taught us much about how cultures used them to explain the world around them. I often get up in the middle of the night to watch meteor showers.

Seven years ago, when light pollution began to obscure the drama and beauty of the night sky, I joined the International Dark-Sky Association, dedicated to protecting the night skies for present and future generations. I found that there were places in the world that had worked to “take back” the dark sky by monitoring and stopping light pollution. And we started visiting them.

I wanted to find a special place to visit, one that met at the intersection of the night sky and winter. I researched places I knew that were the darkest places in the middle of January, and where we had the opportunity of experiencing the celestial phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis.

I found places in Canada and France. But I had traveled to both of those countries, and we were determined for our anniversary to do something new. Ibegan looking at places north of the Arctic Circle and eventually landed on the perfect spot.

The wood cabin with fireplace and the attached glass igloo where the Kneelands watched the Aurora Borealis.

At times it left me speechless. In addition to seeing the stunning colors of the Aurora Borealis, I happened to be there for the rare super blood wolf moon lunar eclipse. From my glass igloo and bundling up to go outside, I saw all phases of the moon all night. The astrophotographer Miguel Pérez Ayúcar has said of such an eclipse, “It’s really the view of all of the sunrises and sunsets that are happening on the Earth at the same time projected onto the surface of the moon.” The connection we experienced knowing that people all over our planet were having the same experience we were reminded us how connected we all are.

The impact was beyond awe. And it was a reminder that so often a trip that you planned turns into even more than you could have expected.

How can we keep learning new things about the natural world?

In 2019, I began working on getting an Audubon Backyard Habitat certification by turning our gardens and yard into a place that could help conserve birds and pollinators. In particular, I knew that monarch butterflies have a critical role as pollinators, and I wanted to learn more about them and how we could support them.

At the same time, I was talking about a desire to slow down my life a bit, to become more mindful, to see and experience different places from new perspectives, and open up the possibility of having experiences I hadn’t planned for.

It seemed like the makings of a trip.

As I learned more about the migration of the monarch butterfly from Mexico, I discovered that the central California coast was one of the places the butterflies stopped to rest. The result was that one early afternoon in November of 2019, I wassitting in the Denver train station, having coffee, thinking about the migration and that a train trip would be a great way to get to the place to see the butterflies. I headed over to the ticket counter, got a schedule and soon had tickets for a sleeper car on the California Zephyr from Denver to San Francisco.

Train travel slowed things down for us, just as I hoped. Although I brought books and games on the train, I was at my most content just watching the landscape through the spacious train windows. I didn’t care about the time. I talked to fellow passengers (including a woman who took the train once a month to conduct cooking classes for prisoners at San Quentin). I saw the sunset for hours on end all with different colors and backgrounds. The train created space where we could relax and focus on the present and the natural world. It was joyful.

Monarch butterflies covering a tree in California.

I decided to stay in places that dovetailed with both elements of the journey: the desire to retreat to a slower time and the wish to connect more with the natural world. I booked rooms, for instance, at the types of inns that were common in the 1940s and 1950s when more people were still traveling by train.

I eventually arrived at a grove where I experienced what I came for: Thousands of monarch butterflies were in the trees — coming, going and resting. It looked like the trees were densely decorated with stained glass. It was otherworldly.

In an effort to live more in the moment, and not plan quite as much as we often do, I tried to grab new experiences as they arose. I went birding. I visited Pinnacles National Park. I tried spelunking in a nearby cave.

How do we connect with and learn about others who are inhabiting this planet with us?

This is another question that has taken us many places over the years. But one answer began many years ago. One of my college professors was from Cuba. I remember a day when his eyes filled with tears as he told of fleeing his homeland, leaving his family behind, and losing more than one passenger to drowning along the way in a makeshift boat. He frequently shared stories about his homeland.

It left me transfixed, and forever curious about the place he came from.

Through the years, I began reading about Cuban culture and history, leaving me hungry to experience the country myself. I got my chance in 2018.

Musicians in Cuba

There were two guides on the trip. One was a man whose family had fled Cuba, and I was entranced by his story of landing as a young child in Connecticut. The other was a Cuban native whose parents had fought in the revolution with Che Guevara. The two perspectives gave us an immediate understanding of the history and culture that has been so central to the country.

The places I stayed were historic — surrounding city plazas, parks, markets and neighborhoods. We rarely had to initiate a conversation. People would walk up to us and ask where we were from. Several times we were invited into homes for a beverage, sometimes a cigar. Many people wanted to share the stories of their families, those who had fled and those who stayed behind.

At one place, a woman asked how we had chosen our occupations. It was different in Cuba, she said, and she talked about not having that option. She told us where one of her cousins lived, and asked if it was a good place. She told us stories of how people in her family escaped, and what risks they took. There were tears and hugs when we left.

What human-made objects inspire us?

Art and architecture open us to new ways of connecting to other people through the things they create, as well as opening our eyes and minds to new ways of seeing and understanding our own lives.

A set of meditation chimes the Kneelands picked up during their travels.

It was 2010, and I have been learning Spanish and knew some about Spanish culture and history. But I wanted to learn more. I wanted to better understand, up close, how that culture and history manifested itself in Spain’s art and architecture. And by experiencing those creations, I hoped to better understand the people who had made it.

To that end, I decided that the best way was to experience that architecture in the context of daily life in a small village. I found an inn that had previously been the farmhouse of an olive grove. The two innkeepers, whose family had operated the farm for at least four generations, showed us how the structure of one stone building had been designed and used for centuries to harvest olive oil, including when much of the work was done by burros. I could imagine how life must have been like there and how the design kept the olive industry vital. The innkeepers also invited us to a festival honoring St. Joseph, where villagers paraded and sang.

I was also interested in exploring Moorish architecture and found an inn where the centuries-old cubic attached housing was built on hilltops and whitewashed in Moorish tradition. Again, being immersed in it allowed me to imagine generations wallowing in the beauty of it.

The serene beauty of the Alhambra, with the mosaics and the water running through it, opened doors to the country’s multicultural history and how its geography shaped its art. After wandering through this unique palace, I was so enthralled that I decided to take a day trip across the Strait of Gibraltar to visit Tangier, Morocco, experiencing more of that culture.

In a different setting, I sought other forms of human creation at Madrid’s Prado Museum, my focus there on attaching to a guide who specialized in pulling centuries of human stories through the colors on the canvas. The colors and strokes reminded us of lives lived before us and forced a humble reckoning with our own relative insignificance in the grand scheme. And then there was Picasso’s Guernica, which overwhelmed our experience at the Reina Sofia museum. The reprints we had seen many times before could never have portended the anguish and chaos of the brush strokes evoking the fragility of human life and the misunderstandings that can so easily give way to war and suffering.

As with so many of our trips, whether we traveled a few miles to get there or many thousands of miles, it never ceases to amaze us that it all begins with a simple question: What’s important to us? Asking that one question has taken our hearts and minds to places we could never have imagined. It has inspired us, taught us, and broadened our understanding of both ourselves and those we share this planet with.

We don’t know where we’re going next. But we do know where the journey begins.

Finding Meaning in Travel: A Step-by-Step Guide

Know who you are and who you want to become as you journey through your life. You can ask yourself two key questions:

What do you value and what gives you purpose in life?

What brings you joy?

Once you’ve answered those questions, think about how you can find those through travel.

Is it natural beauty? Learning about other cultures or where your ancestors came from? Architecture? A curiosity that you have? Whatever the question, there is a broad answer. You just need to find it inside you.

Start the creative process of planning. However you’ve answered any of the specific questions, begin to narrow it down.

What kinds of places have the natural beauty you crave? What cities have the architecture you’d like to see? Where are your ancestors from?

Keep a running list of places you’ve heard or read about that interest you. Perhaps ask for recommendations from friends who have similar values and reasons for travel.

Refer to your list and see which places match your answers in the earlier steps. Perhaps hang up a map and put pins in places that are interesting to you.

Once you’ve picked a place, make sure the logistics aren’t an afterthought.

How you get there, where you stay, what you do should reflect the answers to the previous questions

You may want to keep a journal and, as the trip ends and beyond, spend time reflecting on your experience, what it meant to you and how it fulfilled those first questions.