Several readers have put the question to me: “Moxie, your website says ‘A West Side Girl in the Big Wide World.’ We’ve heard about your West Side experiences. What’s this ‘Big Wide World’ stuff?” Fair enough. Living on the West Side of Buffalo shaped the outline of who I am. The big wide world has certainly filled in the details.
Since I left Buffalo, I’ve lived in four US states and a foreign capital, visited 45 countries and all 50 states. My most recent adventures were in Africa, where among other things, I caught a leopard (on camera) that was stalking me in the dark. On my journeys I’ve seen extreme poverty and extraordinary wealth, spectacular scenic beauty and tragic wastelands, humanity at its best and at its worst. Always, I keep a journal.
As a writer, my job is to look for and contemplate universal truths. A recent question I’ve been pondering is, what prompts a person to leave the comfort of their home to travel? What are we seeking on our sojourns, especially now when one can “travel” anywhere without leaving the couch, courtesy of the Internet? I’m not talking about annual beach vacations or trips to visit friends and family over the holidays. I am talking about traveling to distant lands that are culturally unfamiliar, sometimes uncomfortable, and not without risk. These are the places that tend to attract me because I’m a sucker for unexpected experiences, for the serendipitous surprise.
I think I can trace the day I was first bitten by the travel bug to a place just 20 miles south of Buffalo. I was about 11 years old. Each summer, our family would pile into the station wagon and head to our rented cottage in Angola, NY and a windswept beach nearby called Point Breeze. This particular summer, my cousin and I were allowed to leave the family beach blanket and walk a half mile up the beach by ourselves to a rocky outcropping we grandly called “the sea cliffs.”
From a distance we could see the waves crashing over the slate rocks, and on stormy days the spray would leap 20 feet in the air. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we thought, to sit on those rocks and get splashed by that wild spray? We hurried along the pebbly beach as fast as our flip-flops would take us. We scrambled up the hill, and as soon as our parents were safely out of sight, climbed carefully down the embankment to where water met rock. We sat and waited for the spray. To our disappointment, the waves had settled down and lapped gently at the rocks below us. We inched our way down further. The waves came up around our ankles, so we scooted down another foot, and waited.
Whether the wind shifted or it was simply the normal fluctuation of the waves, I’ll never know. But the next wave that hit came up over our heads. I’ll never forget the force of the water as it pulled us into the lake and the somersaults we turned as the water churned us below the rocks. We came up coughing and gasping for air. I looked at my cousin as we treaded water—and we started laughing hysterically. “Let’s do it again!” we both said and climbed back onto the rocks.
How did that prompt my love for travel and adventure? I learned that day about the adrenaline rush of exploration, of taking risks, the electricity of finding yourself in danger, and the thrill, afterwards, of being alive. Why, if I could survive this, I could survive anything! Sitting on those rocks I would let my mind wander to the Wide World of Sports and the cliff divers in Mexico, then on to climbing the Great Pyramids of Giza, Machu Picchu, perhaps even Mount Everest. My 11-year-old self decided that nothing would stop me from doing what I wanted to do, as long as I didn’t let fear get in the way.
Sure, there have been a few downsides. I’ve been injured, sick, lost, robbed, and harassed on my travels, and survived a few scary plane flights. I’ve had to flee more than one burning building, wear a flak jacket on a road favored by terrorists, and hold my breath when a bus driver did a u-turn in front of six lanes of oncoming traffic. But oh, the stories I could tell!
The big wide world is a fabulous place that provides grist for the writer, a classroom for the intellectually curious, and cultural and culinary immersion for us rank sensualists. Not least of all, it gives us a better appreciation of home and the things we sometimes take for granted.
Do you have an interest in travel, dear reader? Do you remember when you were first bitten by the travel bug? If so, drop me a line. If there is enough interest, I’ll add a few travel blogs to my website.
Moxie, I am a military “brat” who moved every two or three years until I went to College. I had become accustomed to meeting new people and experiencing different places and cultures, so College for me was an exciting but not a terrifying experience, as it clearly was for several women on my freshman hall. I came to view my peripatetic lifestyle as a gift, and even now that I have been settled in northern Virginia since 1987, I love to travel near and far, meeting new people and soaking in the differentness of each new place. I have come to feel there are two kinds of travel: the temporary immersion model typical of most vacations, where you try to see/do/experience as much as you can without turning it into, as my husband would say, a “forced march;” and the full immersion model, which involves actually living in a place and learning the day-to-day rhythms and customs, while sometimes taking temporary immersion trips to specific destinations but returning to just be in a place. I feel fortunate to have been able to do both, and I remember the first time I fully recognized the magic of it. I was about 8, and we were stationed in Germany. My Dad was only a captain in the Army, but the dollar was very strong, so we took a now-mythical family vacation through the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. We never had a reservation in advance, and we stayed in fascinating little towns and once in a small inn on top of a hill in Austria that was surrounded by fields full of grasshoppers. My brother and I commenced a grasshopper catching contest that went on for hours, and that night we had our first bowls of oxtail soup, a family favorite to this day. And when this wonderful trip was over, we went home to Paderborn, where my Dad was an exchange officer with the British Army of the Rhine and I attended a British school. I was officially bit with the traveling bug from then on. Sorry for the long rambling response, but I loved your blog and started thinking about how I got started…
Thank you Caryn, for sharing your own “bitten by the bug” experience. Your response is neither too long nor rambling, but wonderfully evocative. Please keep sharing your stories with me! I love your description of the “full immersion” vacation in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria–one of my favorite parts of the world. I would also like to know where that Austrian inn with all the grasshoppers is located (I loved that story, as strangely, I am very fond of herbivorous insects). I am hoping to go hiking in Austria next year!
Your story is so neat warming and reminds me of when I first realized there is a world to explore. My brother Frank and I are 18 months apart so growing up we were always together, best friends, doing what we were told not to. Lol. Camping is when I was bit by the travel bug. Frank and I would go off and literally get lost. We would hike, walk, swim, for hours. All the while talking about when we would leave Buffalo to see the world. What always amazed me is that we found our way back to our camp. One time we went hiking up a mountain towards an old logging mill in Cuba NY where we have a cabin I guess we were gone so long that our step dad and his brother came looking for us! Lol. They found us, didn’t realize how far we had gone until we were waking back or was steep coming down.
Frank eventually left Buffalo to go to the university of Montana shortly after I left to go in the air force to see the world. Frank’s job which ironically headquarters were based in Buffalo sent him all over the country for months and years at a time, the air force took me all over the works as I made sure to choose a job as an F16Crew Chief that would. I still live to jump in the car or plane and go when I can even if it’s a quick trip to Cali while visiting my mom who now lives in Vegas. I haven’t finished traveling by far, working in retiring early with my husband so we can travel during the cold months of Buffalo and not be snow birds! We want to see the world. I absolutely love Buffalo and will stay as long as life allows us to, but the winter months of January and February will be the time to explore the exotic and not so safe. Until then we take our yearly vacation in a cruise to places we haven’t been.
I will be following your blog. Thank you for writing!
You sound like a kindred spirit, Michelle! An F-16 crew chief sounds like an exciting job and one that no doubt brought you to interesting places. Like you, I love to travel, but there is nothing like coming back home. Write me some time about the places you’ve been and where you want to go so we can compare notes!
You could say I’m a homebody, and never been bitten by the travel bug. I’ve really enjoyed all the trips I’ve been on, but to me, there is nothing better than coming home. I have always been curious about those like you, who seem to thrive on the unfamiliar, and wondered why I never had those desires. Maybe it’s partly fear, but mostly I think it’s stability and comfort. I’m any case, I still have those dreams of traveling “someday” to those places on my bucket list!
There is a lot to be said for stability and comfort! And I can tell from your comments that when you do travel, it means a lot to you. Thank you for being one of my regular readers!
I remember our times at Pt Breeze. Especially the night of a campfire where we were trying to catch the eyes of some cute guys. When we went to the restroom we looked st each other and started to laugh as we realized we were full of soot. Two glamorous babes!!!
Ha ha! Oh yes, I remember that night Nancy! Thank goodness it was dark!
Great story Moxie. An amazing amount of miles you have put under your belt. I am very familiar with Angola. My Grandfather built his own cottage on Old Lake Shore road in the 1940’s. My Father helped build it. As kids during the 60’s and early 70’s we visited and stayed overnight many, many times. My Uncle bought was used to be a farm house down the road and right on the lake. He still has it to this day. Over the years I have stayed often while visiting our hometown of Buffalo. To me there is, and was, nothing like Angola in the summer. So peaceful, so serene compared to the West Side where our family home was. I will match Angola sunsets with any sunset in the world I have seen. When I go back and stay in Angola I feel like a salmon that has returned to it’s upstream spawning ground. It is part of my DNA. All the best and safe travels, John
John, how neat that we have an Angola connection. The homes on Old Lake Shore Road are something more than cottages now (certainly the ones facing the lake) so you are truly fortunate to have had one in your family for so long. I’ll never forget the wonderful smell and feel of our old, wooden, un-air conditioned cottage, and our trips to watch the sunset at the lake. Thank you for sharing your story.
Yes Moxie, Angola and the area itself on the way there from Buffalo has certainly changed over the years. I remember when there were only a few Mom and Pop places to shop for food along with a lone fruit and vegetable building on route 5, a mile or so before our turnoff to Old Lake Shore road . I was saddened to see that they tore down the Drive-in on Route 5 right at our turnoff. It had the huge Comedy and Tragedy theatrical symbols on the front side of the large screen. I ended up being a theater major for a semester or two so those symbols meant a lot to me. When we were younger, an older cousin took us to a few movies there with her then, 17 year old boyfriend. A 1967 Sonny and Cher movie vividly comes to mind. I also remember the end of summer, multi-car funeral procession, complete with coffin, that slowly drove by my Grandfather’s cottage that symbolized the burying of “Old Man Summer” on Labor Day, the traditional end of the summer in Angola. It is such a special memory of such a special time. I can going on and on but all I will say is that I never feel my more natural self than when I am in Angola during summer, sitting on the beach at my Uncle’s place as a beautiful sun sits hanging just over the water in the distant blue horizon and watching as it slowly sets into the Lake. Safe travel, all the best. John