Emily Dorn, local traveler

I don’t need to go anywhere except my front porch to encounter life in its finest form. Living in Los Angeles has forever redirected my reasons and motives for traveling. When I travel, I often think of my LA days as a reference point for the type of openness, ingenuity and experiences I seek to have in communities abroad.

Little did I know that there exists a name for these types of travel experiences and it is called the Local Travel Movement. My front porch memoirs may not be considered a typical ‘travel story’. That was my home, after all; I lived there. But I believe that the essence of what made these experiences so rich mirrors the roots of the Local Travel Movement.

To me, local travel simply means breathing in a little bit deeper your current surroundings. I adore all three words in the phrase Local Travel Movement; both stand alone and even more so in unison. Local. Right where you are. Your present moment and locale. (And in the same breath…) Travel. Implies that you’ve traveled from somewhere to arrive in this Local destination. Most likely you’re an ‘outsider.’ And Movement. Imagine a movement of people in all countries, cities, nooks and crannies of the world crazy about the concept of simply breathing in deeper their current surroundings!

The incredible thing about this movement is that you don’t necessarily have to ‘travel’ anywhere to be involved (hence the Los Angeles example). As our tranquil Buddhist friends teach us: Wherever you go, there you are.

I think about the damage we’ve inflicted on our planet over the years and it seems to me that when we’ve caused the most harm, we have taken one of two approaches: We’ve either operated as tourists and thus don’t care about the future or sustainability of our actions, or we act as though we are kings or lords of a domain. In both cases we’ve exploited, exhausted, damaged. We lack empathy. Fortunately, there is a middle way when it comes to travel and friends, that is the Local Travel Movement.

The above is an excerpt of the complete article found on the More Local blog