Being A Local Everywhere

A Hard-to-Apply How-to

Recently, I have been all over. I've been all over the map for most of my life. Currently, I write from Union Station in Chicago, having recently arrived in the Windy City from out West. Montana. Getting around, seeing the sights, is something that has a tinge of sacridity to me. I made up the word sacridity, but its meaning should be clear. Something that has always been a comfort to me on my travels, both stateside and beyond, is that something about each place, with precious few unpleasant exceptions, has felt familiar.

I love the rows of houses and restaurants in Lincoln Park as if they were home, I love the big empty of eastern New Mexico for the endless stories she has to tell. I love the rolling hills and farms and forests of southern Indiana and northern Kentucky for the gentle, fertile beauty she won't, but ought to, boast about. I love northwest Montana for her density and I love eastern Montana for her bleak beauty. I love central Africa for her familiar foreignness and I love central China for her landscapes so complex that simple wonder is the only possible response. But most of all, I love how all of these places have been my genuine, comfortable home.

What I am describing is feeling like a local. I don't mean knowing the best place to get a cheap meal or who to call when your car breaks down, though with the internet now you can easily get these insider tips in any town, big or small. What I mean is that every place holds a small piece of magic reserved for the expectant and curious traveler. All there is to do is be open to whatever may be around the next corner, next tree, and listen.

Going through any place acknowledging only the pavement 100 feet ahead, or worse yet, the screen 6 inches ahead, is a tragic miss that leaves the misser worse off than they were before. A local knows what surrounds them, and a traveler who pays attention, pays critical thought, to what’s around them, is rapidly becoming a local because, well, they are learning. They are acquainting. In this way, anyone can be a local simply by being ready and open to take is what the world shows them.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Traversing this country or any country firmly on the ground reveals these things unseen. The term 'fly over state' makes me happy because it implies there are fewer people to clog up the roads and obstruct the views. There is something about not even knowing where you are staying or what you're doing, sleeping outside, that connects one more deeply to a place than six months in an apartment ever could. But moreover, I have found this way of traveling breeds a desire, a desire to live the lives of everyone you see, to know what it’s like in that town, that big city, or that tiny farmhouse that’s close to absolutely nothing. 

Presently, I am on a train, traveling through the southern parts of Chicago (yes I was in Union Station a few paragraphs ago, I write in chunks), and I almost feel like I am leaving home even though I am bound for Houston, which is as much of a traditional home as I have ever known. Sure, I was born in Chicago, though I never lived here past the age where memory develops, so it has never really been a home to me in the way we think of home. But it also is a home because it is a place where I have come to with curiosity, a place that beckons any visitor without malicious intent to come, see, learn and contribute. Being a local can happen as soon as you pass the city limit sign and can last long after you depart. You see, being a local is an attitude, free of resident requirements and not granting the freedom to complain about tourists or Californians. Being a local means expecting to be wowed by architecture and landscape features in equal measure, about trying food you haven’t heard of and about smiling at every last person you pass, be it 100 a minute in Chicago, or 2 people a day in Condon, Montana. 

Being a local isn’t knowing every last thing about a place. It is wanting to know every last thing about a place because the world is a beautiful and deeply interesting place, and you see that and would rather experience that than sit in the same place, doing the same thing, until expiration. Being a local is a state of being, not an address on a document. It is the ability to be content alone or in a crowd, on a mountain, on the road or in a stadium. Being a local, to me, is being curious.

A word of caution. While going everywhere all at once is something I find deeply rewarding, it can be lonely. The company afforded to an expectant traveler by a place, and by a person, are two different kinds of company. Both can sustain, for a time, but each impacts the heart differently. I am not judging which is better or worse, that is an impossible task, but they are different. Being a local in so many different places means that the city, or lack thereof, is often the closest companion you have. 

Speaking of being a local everywhere, I am home, to where, as much as I have been a local in the traditional sense, I am a local. Texas. I have had many adventures and misadventures far from home this summer, in places where I mostly felt like a local and occasionally felt very far from home. I deeply look forward to speaking with as many of you as I can one on one to relay my adventures and maybe, just maybe, inspire someone to go and be a local in a place they have never been.