by Lisa Hiton
Before I had traveled anywhere as a child, I wanted to. I wanted to go. To the world’s great cities. To Argentina. To the Great Barrier Reef. The Middle East. I wanted to see and eat everything. I wanted to swim in the Aegean, hear opera in Monaco, read haiku to the moon in Japan, observe penguins in their natural habitat, climb Machu Picchu. And while few of these bucket-list items have been crossed off, the inspiration to see these corners of the world have inspired many essays, poems, recipes, and the pursuit of dreams.
To go to those parts of the world that seem so unknown, foreign, terrifying, and exotic and let the landscape accustom you to its parts is to be a traveler. And this is the spirit we must bring to our travel writing—even if we have nowhere to go.
"Travel" at Home
The best place to practice being a traveler and travel writer is right where you are—to write what you know about the places you know most intimately. This may seem a mundane task, as your hometown may seem tiresome living in it day after day.
But whether you love or hate where you live, you know it deeply.
Accounting for it can help bring its culture to life on the page for any reader. There are some elements of where you live that can give you easy access to writing about place.
Writing about Weather
One place to begin is the air around you. While the weather may be the most mundane piece of conversation at a dinner party, it holds more markers to a landscape than we give credit for, especially in the places we live.
Do you live somewhere with four seasons? In the mountains? At swamp level? In a polluted city? In a clear, rural area?
While the answers to these questions may seem simple and uninteresting, when brought to life, they can place a reader in something true and potentially exotic.
For example, living somewhere with four drastic seasons may seem harsh, alluring, or marvelous to a person who has never experienced a snow-filled winter. You might even start with a list of facts about the weather and climate of where you live like this:
Deerfield IL through the Seasons
- Four drastic seasons
- Lake-effect wind and snow
- Drastic summer thunderstorms
- Potential tornado and microburst incidents
Making this small list about weather in my hometown led me to think of another related list: what this climate gives life to: apple orchards, lots of lettuce varieties, root vegetables, all kinds of trees. And even some critters that live in the area: raccoons, opossums, coyotes, foxes, mallard ducks, cardinals, blue jays, robins, etc.
These may seem like ubiquitous tropes to me, but to someone who lives in a hotter climate near, say, the Gulf Coast, this landscape would be vivid and different. And to those who did grow up in this place or a place like it, this would authenticate my voice as an expert on the area.
Write about Buildings (or Lack Thereof)
The human impact on a locale can be expressed in buildings. If you live in a city, you’re no doubt surrounded by buildings. If you live somewhere more rural or suburban, there might be more land that meets the eye upon arrival to your hometown.
This is a great source of research and writing for a budding travel writer. You could begin by making a list of buildings you love, hate, or miss near where you live. Deerfield, IL has changed in some ways since I was a child and this will be exemplified in my list:
Buildings/Establishments I Love
- Deerfield Public Library: Though I miss some of the tropes of my childhood before the building was remodelled, enough of the building has stayed the same and been upgraded that it holds all of its allure for me.
- The Deerfield Train Station: As a kid, I made a model of the train station because I loved it so much. It represents travel, quiet time reading, and the idea of leaving or returning in a given moment.
- Deerfields Bakery: Established over 100 years ago, cookies and cakes from this place are still a staple item for all who visit or grew up in the area.
Places I Miss
- Lindemann’s Pharmacy: Walgreen’s headquarters are in Deerfield, IL. And when the company entered the scene, the town pharmacy was forced out. I used to sit at the barstools and order ice cream, which came with baseball scratch-off cards. Mr. Lindemann knew everyone’s name. Some of the small-town charm of a place like this has left as the surrounding areas gentrify and accumulate wealth.
These sorts of details can all be woven into your writing about where you are from.
Write about the Community
While any outsider can see buildings, only a native can understand what it feels like to live amongst them in the context of your town at this time in history. The community itself is made in those buildings, parks, train stations, etc. From people, to food, to employment, to pastimes, you can remark on how people spend their days in your part of the world.
Do you live in a farming community? A surfer town? A mining town? An urban area?
While this is normal for your area, an outsider would want to know the ins and outs of those parts of culture. There are many approaches to bringing a town’s culture to life on a page.
Two central things to consider are people and food. I’ll return again to some establishments in my town that make it vivid to my insider understanding of it:
- Elegance in Meats: This recently closed family butcher represents so much to this area of the north suburbs, as does its recent closing. This family butcher provided all kinds of delicacies to surrounding communities, especially Jews of my grandparents and parents’ generations who moved from Chicago’s “Great West Side” (said in a yiddish accent, the great vesttt side). Whether you needed your white fish ground with onions to make gefilte fish, homemade kishke, brisket, or fresh schmaltz for matzah ball soup, there was no place more thorough and prepared than E & M. It’s closing due to rent hikes has been a great grief on the community. Another reason why the introduction of places like Whole Foods has begun to change the feel of these towns.
- Economic Factors: Deerfield, IL is a town riddled with economic history. Once a destination for section-8 housing and integration, but resisted during the heated riots of the 60s, a drive through the town will show the trickle effect of lower-income families to wealthier families closer to Lake Michigan. Depending on what kind of piece I was writing, I’d definitely talk about this history and even why James Baldwin came for an under-reported visit, especially with the onset of house-flips happening in the area. This feeds into both the abandoning of small town values, the increase of achievement pressure on young families moving to the area, and the changing nature of American towns.
What details and ways of thinking speak to your town’s central heartbeat? What do people value? Why? How is that seen in the physical landscape? In the buildings? In the trees? The food?
Write about the People
Beyond the way your community is organized, you can also write about the norms of the people in your town. What are the mannerisms of people and why?
- Accents: Are you from a part of the American South where the drawls are thick as molasses? Or perhaps, like me, you’re from a part of the Midwest where everyone overstates their “A”s. These elements can help a reader feel immersed in your part of the world and understand what it feels like to be around people from your town.
- Language: What are the words that identify where you are from? When I moved to Boston to go to college, it was clear to others I was from the Midwest because I call soda pop “pop” instead of “soda” or “Coke”.
You can also describe mannerisms of people in your town or community. Are you from a part of the world where people speak with their hands? Do most families eat dinner together? Are people neighborly? Why or why not?
Understanding Place Makes Great Travel Writers
While traveling can help us see where we are from and where we go in vivid and divergent ways, the practice of writing about what we’ve been grounded in may just be the most important first-step in becoming a travel writer. Bringing a place to life in prose—a place that is real, not imagined—requires dedication, research, and knowing what details mark an insider. Understanding that and bringing it with you when you do travel will allow you to seek out those details everywhere—to understand every place you go to as (not a tourist, but rather) a traveler—as invested in those communities, foods, people, buildings, and lands—as though you, too, could learn to belong.
About Lisa
Lisa Hiton is an editorial associate at Write the World. She writes two series on our blog: The Write Place where she comments on life as a writer, and Reading like a Writer where she recommends books about writing in different genres. She’s also the interviews editor of Cosmonauts Avenue and the poetry editor of the Adroit Journal.
