Leaning into traveling simply

small rituals, home comforts, and the beauty of "enough", at home and beyond.

As I write this, I’m sitting in an Airbnb condo in Traverse City, a city several hours north of my home. I came into town to visit my son, who’s going to college here; to attend an author event featuring

Bonnie Jo Campbell

talking about her new book The Waters (I’m on Chapter 5 and it’s amazing so far - it’s got everything I love: interesting female characters, nature, herbalism, rural Michigan life, and a touch of magical realism for good measure); and also for more official work purposes. Today, I’ll head into the editorial offices of MyNorth. That’s the company that publishes Traverse, a lifestyle magazine focused on the Northern Michigan region I love so much. I’ve been an editor with the magazine for a few months now, and while I mostly work remotely from my home in southwest Michigan, one of the amazing perks of my job is getting to travel north even more often than I used to.

My bedside table while traveling closely resembles home!

I find travel just as stimulating as I did when I was younger, but a little more wearying, too. I surround myself with comforts that help me stay in-tune with the rituals of home life: my slippers, a tin of favorite tea, my Hatch sunrise alarm clock¹. The “passenger side” of my bed, as I like to call it, is covered with books and journals. The tiny condo fridge is filled with foods I brought from home, like a big bowl of lemony chicken, veggie, lentil and bean soup—I improvised on this recipe, using collards instead of kale, soaked & simmered dried beans instead of canned, and adding parsnips along with the carrots and celery.

It’s not always possible to eat “normally” while traveling, but when I’m traveling for work and not as a tourist, I find that one meal out per day is plenty. More than that feels taxing to not only my wallet but my nervous system—choosing the restaurant, scrutinizing the menu, digging out my reading glasses to make out the tiny type on the menu; and why is the lighting always so bad and the music so loud?

I prefer to explore cities on foot, mostly just looking through windows—though yesterday I did visit two separate bookstores, a coffee shop, and a tea store—and there’s something delicious and almost subversive about digging into a bowl of soup in an Airbnb while reading a book in my bedroom slippers.

It’s so different from how I “did travel” as a younger woman, but these days it suits me well. I’m leaning in.

I find living a shrunken-down version of my at-home existence to be an illustrative exercise in what I really value having in my life, and how simple those things usually are. When it comes down to brass tacks, a comfy bed, a spot to sit and work, and a place to prepare food meet all my space needs. Good tea, lighting, and a pile of books cover many of my “wants”.

Shortly after I woke this morning, I read this lovely piece from

Karen Walrond

, in which she describes the power in noticing the beautiful little things in our lives:

Later, I discovered someone had left a comment. “Gosh,” she said, “you’re so lucky you have such a beautiful life.” I remember thinking, I mean, it’s just a mug of tea. I’m certain that commenter had drunk a hot beverage before, and if she happened to place her mug in a sunbeam, she would have seen exactly what I’d photographed. My life is no more beautiful than hers.

But I realize now that her comment made a lovely point: I did have a beautiful life, just not in the grandiose ways that we often think “a beautiful life” is supposed to mean. But my life was beautiful enough to contain a hot mug of tea, and streaming sunlight in my window. And that’s not nothing.

This was a sweet thought to center me this morning as I consider how to engage not only with this town I’m visiting and the work I’m doing for my employer, but also the way I show up for, and invest in, my own little corner of the world.

It’s so easy to get caught up in a quest for more, more, more without even stopping to consider why, or what’s to be gained from it. Despite my better judgment I sometimes find myself getting antsy about my growth on Substack and elsewhere on the Internet; how it compares to others’, whether or not it’s “enough.”

I sometimes get this way when I travel, too. It’s not enough for me to simply enjoy a place, my brain tells me, I must own a piece of it somehow!

Maybe that’s why, as a younger woman, I wore myself out trying to experience every last restaurant, bar, and shop. And as a forty-something woman, I admit that this tendency shows itself in obsessively browsing Realtor.com.

But often, when I’m stuck in that joyless march to the “more” that somehow never satisfies, I’ll have an illuminating moment that makes it clear how absolutely jam-packed my life is with beautiful sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and experiences—many of which, it turns out, I don’t have to do anything to earn or achieve.

I can explore lovely neighborhoods without owning a single square foot of real estate in them.

The lake and trees are here for me to look at - I don’t need to own them to enjoy them, any more than I “own” the steam rising off my mug of tea.

Every day I get to sit down and write, whether for an employer, for my audience…or simply for myself.

And that, to borrow Karen’s words, isn’t nothing.

Happy Monday, friends. I hope you find many beautiful little things to enjoy this week. And I’d love to hear about your rituals and routines when you travel! Do you bring comforts from home or completely change things up when you’re on the road?

1. I’ve partnered with Hatch; and this is an affiliate link. My love for this clock runs deep!