The Gleanings Project: Outside of the Ordinary: Women’s Travel Stories

“Walking on Water” Acrylic on Watercolour Paper, DS

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Cecil, Lynn and Catherine Bancroft, eds. Outside of the Ordinary: Women’s Travel Stories. Toronto: ON, Second Story Press, 2006.

498 Words

From as early as the seventeenth century, women’s travel writing, often recorded in letters back home, focused on observations of other women, the environment, the people and culture, the customs observed, and travelling tips. 

Release from daily routine often accompanies the lure of travel, and being separated from home, careers, even family, means that sometimes inhibitions are ignored, fears overcome, challenges met and conquered. (ix)

She looks back to grin at me over her shoulder and calls out, “Have fun, Mom!” (1)

We’ll enjoy the visit as friends, a new development since the days when we clashed over her concept of motherhood and mine. I am reaching the age when I’m learning to appreciate older women. (3)

My fingers cramp and my hand begins to ache. (5)

I went to Italy once and fell in love with my sister’s brother-in-law, fifteen years younger than me, who couldn’t speak a word of English . . . (9)

I began to desire to see certain things in the world  and to be a woman of the world . . . (11)

The lung-penetrating damp and cold of Venice . . . I had to find a gift that was also a message to this man I could not speak to and whom I would never again see. (15)

She is made almost entirely of air and floats in my arms as easily as a balloon. (19)

The space where her breast once was is still a sore, raised, red scar. (23)

They owe me a favor, so I’ll see what I can do. (29)

Every possibility in the world, every adventure and dream, suddenly and wonderfully opened up to my family and me. (31)

My mother’s stories of her childhood became part of the fabric of my own childhood . . . (33)

An answering joy rose inside me. (35)

There had always been a tornado somewhere. (37)

The weekend poetry workshop was held at the University of Iowa. My friend and I found the sessions inspiring, intense, and far too short . . . My friend shook her head. “Jasmine,” she pronounced. (39)

One must fully depart from home to understand it . . . and ultimately arrives at a concept of home as movement, rather than a fixed geographical point. (42)

It is a physical accomplishment in a life marked primarily by intellectual ones . . . (49)

A particular charm of the trip was the sameness of the routine –– eat, ride, eat, ride, eat, sleep . . . (51)

We loved the Texan whose reaction to our story whose reaction to our story, “Well, dang!,” gave us a leitmotif for the rest of the trip . . . I know we laughed every day, laughed a lot, and I have no idea what was so funny. (55)

What I felt was a call that originated in a deep within me, a call to begin a search for something that is very difficult to name or explain. (59)