Editor’s Letter

Why We Travel

By almost any measurement, travel and tourism is the world’s largest industry. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, travel and tourism generates 10.4 percent of all global economic activity. In financial analyses such as these, however, the numbers often become ends in themselves and tend to obscure how they represent the human element, which is codified in the statistics.

In our inaugural issue, I sought to differentiate Natural TravelerMagazinefrom other publications with some variation of “Travel” in their titles by our mission, which is not about reporting on travel as, “I went there, stayed where, saw whatever.” Instead, we would “celebrate travel in its broadest sense, well beyond mere journal entries detailing jaunts around the planet, more an exploration of those interior journeys that inspire us to record, through the arts, what we have seen, heard and felt.” In a world, which seems hell bent on tearing apart those elements, which join us in our humanity, our mission appears more relevant than ever. Travel offers the singular opportunity for us to interact within the fraternity/sorority of what we share in common and to recognize that commonality when we interact.

I have traveled extensively, near to home, far and wide. I cannot think of a single destination where I didn’t find good souls, who befriended me and delighted in showing me what their place in this world had to offer. Whether I was visiting an A-list beach resort or the bustling core of a crowded city, my question to those I met was always the same: “Hey, [fill in the location], what’s happening?” Whenever there have been efforts to demonize a place and the people where I’d visited, I’ve always focused upon my experiences there and how much I admired what I’d experienced.

In the words of the Henry Miller quote that sits alone on the inside cover of every issue of our magazine: “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of looking at things.

-- Tony Tedeschi