Tony Hiss, in the current issue of The American Scholar, has written a wonderful essay called “Wonderlust: how ‘deep travel’ opens our minds to the rich possibilities of ordinary experience.” As can be seen from the following quote, the essay exemplifies pedestrianism. Get the issue at your local bookstore; read the essay.
My expression for moments like this is deep travel. In an instant, our sense of the here and now that we're a part of expands exponentially, and everything around us is so vivid and intensely experienced that it's like waking up while already awake. … In my own deep travel, I've found that, once I reactivate it, even a long familiar route – like a walk through nearby streets – exists within such a fullness of brand-new or never-before-considered details and questions that I wonder how I ever had the capacity to exclude this information from consideration. …
Deep travel is not so much the enemy of the ordinary as it is an understanding that when you start to look closely there is no ordinary.
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