The Future of Travel

Boise, Idaho

Jon Tyson

Author Dan Pieraccini

Truth be told, when Delbarton went virtual last year, I thought the time for my All-American Chautauqua had come. I could drive my Fiat Spider across the country, stopping only to fill up on 93 Octane, Waffle House, and rest stop Wi-Fi.

Instead, I took up backyard gardening.

Woefully, the most traveling I’ve done is cross the Hudson occasionally to New York City. It’s not a far trek from where I live in Jersey City. My partner is going through a Lucite phase, and Facebook Marketplace is her passport to collecting spectral pieces of furniture.

"Ghost town" didn't quite capture the feeling of Gotham during COVID. I’d liken it to an aged relative after they’ve been let out of the ICU. New York was gaunt, cadaverous, and half-naked, clad in ill-fitting, unfamiliar tatters.

Amanda Murphy

Stillness in the streets, punctuated by the tumbleweed of two-ply disposable masks; gaping windows announcing defeat with “For Rent” signs; strangers’ eyes avoiding yours while they cautiously sidestep you.

You just sort of stood there looking around—something New Yorkers would never actually permit—and then you wondered, “Where’s the Times Square Naked Cowboy?”

Was this the new tableau that will meet us in foreign lands? I don’t want to see that. That’s not what travel was for me, and if it’s this desolation that awaits us, countries 83 to 100 on my list can stay right where they are. I don’t like visiting ruins.

And I’m not going to Miami.

"So, what's left to do?", a friend asks me while I help him renovate his home. Yeah, I know—the symbolism isn’t lost on me either. Anyway, he flippantly proposes, “Go somewhere random, off the grid, like...uh…” It takes him a second to pluck a real gem of obscurity. “...BOISE, IDAHO?” “Funny you should mention Boise, Idaho,” I counter. In truth, New York, San Francisco, and even my own Jersey City, have experienced a blood-letting exodus of population. The great liberator of Work from Home, the dissolution of company workspaces, and the phenomenon of urbanites taking up—of all thing gardening—has catalyzed new middle-class migratory patterns.

So, where’d everybody go?

That’s right—Boise, Idaho.

Will it be like every other resettling fad we’ve seen over the recent years: Portland, Austin, Asheville, Williamsburg? Jersey City?

Strange things happen when folks pick up their roots and cross-pollinate. New ideas. Fresh music. Fusion food trucks. Things start to get interesting. And some of America’s most alluring places like it that way.

View of Manhattan

Zac Ong

Stephanie Klepacki

Biltmore Estate, Ashville, North Carolina

Austin skyline

Megan Markham

To preserve the originality of their Art Deco downtown, early Asheville banned well-known franchises and chain restaurants, hedging the golden arches and Mobilmarts at the highway rest stops where they belong.

Lone Star State transplants and consummate Texans all know the mantra “Keep Austin Weird.”

And the rent alone in Williamsburg keeps it…well, fairly insular, I’d say.

The authenticity of these places, the new crops of new inhabitants, the affordable living available to people of color, the pockets of immigrant communities, and the chance to try something new—the spirit of America incarnate grows well in that kind of soil. Must be all that gardening I’ve been doing.

But I think that’s what I want to see. The Boise, Idahoes and their sister city equivalents across the globe. I want to see what the new house looks like, after the for-sale signs have been taken down and the rebuilding is complete. I want to see what the garden yields after the sweat of the summer is wiped from our communal brows. Nascent strains of American culture born of true cross pollination. Innovation and revitalization, a germination that springs from the tremendous rain we’ve had.

And I can’t wait to see the smiles that come when people can step towards one another, and meet for the first time.

Nick Dunlap