Locomotoring

Exposure therapy suggests that if you are afraid of spiders, then to get over that fear, spend more time with them! For instance, if I were afraid of spiders, I might photograph spider webs covered by morning dew. I think that exposure therapy works by rightsizing your expectation of the outcome. An anxious brain tends to catastrophize, but in real life, outcomes are not extreme. As you gather experiences through exposure, you rebuild brain circuitry and eventually, you start to lean towards the common outcomes.

If exposure therapy had worked on its own, my travel anxiety would not have existed for decades. I am moderately well trod and have been traveling since I was a kid. It is only recently that I have turned a corner and it has felt like a switch instead of a long winded effort. To see where Schrödinger’s cat fits in, stay tuned…

My first significant reduction in travel anxiety was happenstance and came in the guise of a travelogue, The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. The reason I had picked up the The Places in Between has less to do with the esteemed writer and more to do with Afghanistan. It is a land that will forever be out of my reach. Rory follows Babur’s 1504 march from Herat to Kabul – about 500 miles. It is a tale , and devoid of creature comforts. The path would have been arduous even in the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. He might have been one of the first few foreigners to explore the blown up ruins of Bamiyan Buddha statues. Rory walks 30 miles a day through a harsh winter landscape, from one feuding tribe to next, from one impoverished village to next, through bitter cold, sleeping on floors of village mosques, eating frugal meals and suffering from diarrhea. This journey feels like a blurry exploration between life and death without any obvious rewards.

I had just finished reading Rory’s travelogue, when we went stargazing at the Pinnacles National Park Campground. As I lay in a stupor in a 100F tent wondering if I would outlast the day. I thought about Rory’s experiences and I started to run through my own survival options. I was out there with hundreds of other campers at a popular campground, the tent was next to the park’s general store that carried several freezers full of ice, the campground pool and showers were next to it. Worst case, I was no more than a 20 minute drive to the nearest town and its air conditioned cafe. And as I ran through that checklist a few times, the acuteness of my anxiety subsided. I embraced the stupor. I just knew that I would be OK. The The Places in Between has left a mooring in my brain that I hope to be able to return to when travel stress is riding high.

I have since analyzed my own recent travel misadventures against Rory’s walk across Afghanistan. On the Antartica trip, the worst that happened to me, not counting watching my partner get sea sick, was having to listen to incessant chatter of reel makers. On the Alaska trip, our tiny cabin stank of wet shoes. The camping trip to the Cuyama Badlands had resulted in a flat tire in the middle of Carrizo Plain National Monument. During the last trip to India, a nor’wester could have occurred but didn’t. While hopscotching from one delightful Northern California town to next, too much snow on Mount Shasta and Crater lake had limited our rambling plans. Pretty tame misadventures, wouldn’t you say?

The other thing that helped, quite unexpectedly, was camping. Post-facto, I realized that my travel anxiety comes from stepping away from my comfort zone, my home. It isn’t that it is neat and organized. In fact, far from it. The hummingbird feeder is frequently in need of topping up. The spider webs stay ignored as long as they are not in my curds and whey. The spice cabinet has over hundred jars, each jar labeled with chalk, nearly all smudged. The collection of indoor plants are often dehydrated, but never desiccated. The library is not designed to find what you are looking for, but to read what you find. Yet, within these walls that barely contain entropy, when you launch a familiar protocol, a familiar outcome occurs.

Going camping is a deliberate step away from the comfort zone. For instance, consider airport and airplane toilets. It isn’t just the germaphobe in me that has a problem with these toilets. The one at home has a toto bidet, the best piece of luxury in a modern home, IMHO. The warm toilet seat combined with the warm water of the bidet is like a gentle caress. But after a few days of using a compost pit, a simple flush toilet becomes luxury. Similarly, food at home is fussy by choice. The blandness and delivery of airplane food is not far from camping food.

The third thing that helped ended up being a sheer coincidence. I have recently started wearing a sleep tracker and it has helped me experiment with sleep. I have zeroed in on Yoga Nidra – a fancy name for a short nap. At home, a nap is rarely needed but when indulged in, works like a restorative magic pill. I have always feared jet lag. I am on a short working trip to Kolkata. The layover at Dubai airport was over six hours and I checked into a Japanese style capsule sleeper where a short nap restored my physical resilience. Here, in Kolkata, I am leaning into naps heavily, and it seems to work better than a cocktail of sleep aids.