Once upon a time, about the only way people could travel was by putting one foot in front of the other. Oh, occasionally, they might fall into a river and grab hold of a log and hope to get off before the river led to some rocks or a waterfall. That may have been their encouragement to learn to swim. Oh, swimming, you say. How ordinary! But, even today, only about 44% of the human population know how to swim unassisted. (Most can float if they don’t panic.) Dreams of personal flying (without assistance) was a long held dream — but I think most have now decided to allow mechanical assistance.
Technical innovations
Humans are curious and good observers. A rolling log eventually got fashioned into a wheel, though there probably never was a stone wheel with a stick in the middle as you get from the comic “B.C.” or with a wooden axle as in the “Flintstones”. The log that they clung to in the river became hollowed out for more room, speed, and stability. People learned to use the wind with sails on boats, then for energy in windmills. Steam from a boiling vessel of water could push like the wind. So the power of wind was emulated with artificial “wind” in the form of steam. Eventually, people had many choices for movement — walk, swim, wheelchairs, hot air balloons, row boats, sailing boats, power boats, trains, automobiles, spaceships. Quite a journey through history.
Organizing for travel
Many methods of travel have been used — new ones developed and ways, still only dreams, that have yet to be developed. But being able to move is only a small part of travel. Daily travel has been, and still is, the most frequent reason for travel. Go out to the fields to work. Go to the savannah to hunt. Go out to sea to fish. Go to the local factory, or office, to work. General purpose containers such as pockets, purses, billfolds, backpacks, and tucker bags were created for carrying the needs for the hunt or the office.
Going farther, and for longer periods, was often a matter of income. People with little income would either just put their bag on their shoulder and move along — or, if it was a family, belongings would be loaded onto a mule or perhaps a cart. Carts were (and still are) pulled by dogs, horses, and humans — depending on resources.
Ah, but the higher income folks. If you’ve ever watched “Joe vs. the Volcano” (one of my favorites with Tom Hanks), you’ll see him go into a luggage store and come out with four huge steamer trunks — each big enough to serve as a room for a small child (I’m exaggerating a tiny bit). Upper class, royalty, the local “big wigs” relied on others to make themselves comfortable and move whatever they might think they “might” need on a voyage or at the other end of the travel. The various travels of Isabella L. Bird throughout the Americas and the Pacific are fascinating. She “roughed it” but she also had a lot of extra human labor assisting her.
Even today, you can occasionally spot a family with the very latest-fashion clothes with a MOUND of luggage queueing up at an airline counter to check their dozen suitcases and valises. I have yet to see them with the steamer trunks of yore but I will bet they still occur.
Borders
Ah, borders! Those artificial lines on the maps that indicate “ours” and “theirs”. It’s a concept that less complex societies don’t understand (because it doesn’t really make a lot of sense). It hasn’t been that long — perhaps only a couple hundred years (not sure exactly) — that people could just move around unimpeded. No passports, no rites of visas and papers of entry. Perhaps much of this fluidity arose from the fact that almost the only ones who traveled voluntarily were the rich. The poor more often were fleeing war, disease, floods, or some other reason why they just couldn’t stay at the place they were leaving. The poor usually didn’t do it willingly.
An exception was the pilgrim journeys. I am using the word “pilgrims” on the more generic level — people traveling to a sacred place for religious reasons — and NOT the more specific folk who arrived at Plymouth Rock in the Americas. No matter how they traveled — they did hope to return (healthily, if possible) back to their origination point. As part of their religious sense of duty, pilgrims often had very few possessions with them (possibly even gave their possessions away) and felt it made them more worthy if they suffered more.
Security
I have absolutely no idea — nor do I think there is a way for anyone to know — whether airline security makes us safer. I have a reasonable idea as to how it evolved. Humans (especially in the US) have a desire to “feel safe” in a world that doesn’t really care if we are safe. I can think of all kinds of ways to get around security measures (and have NO desire to try them) and I am sure that people who seriously want to get around them can figure out ways. We see these things in movies. Movies are not meant to be instruction manuals (usually) but they give sufficient hints for others to follow in the scriptwriters’ footprints if they so desired.
I do know that airline security makes air travel much less enjoyable for me. In our busy busy type-A society, however, we often have to do things the fastest way possible — and that is usually by air.
Once upon a time, when we didn’t have the large travel security infrastructure built up (it hasn’t been that many years), I booked a flight to Hawaii. But — silly me — I got the flight number and departure time reversed in my mind. I don’t really remember the precise numbers but the flight was something like 0205 and the departure time was 01:10. But I THOUGHT the departure time was 2:05pm. I got to the airport believing that I was still an hour early. The ticket agent laughed and told me to run for it. I did and I made it — because all I had to do was to arrive at the gate and show my ticket to the gate agent. This scenario may seem like a total fantasy to all of you who are under 50 years of age. But it was real and it was normal (except for the misreading of the flight information).
I am unwilling to pay for the comfort, and privilege, of not being treated like a sardine in a can. But, it is easy to understand the profit-motive for the airlines in configuring the planes in this way. The security requirements are just an additional overhead that one must SILENTLY (you dare not say a word about it while in the airport) anticipate and permit.
Summary
Each of us will make many journeys in our lives. Most have daily journeys. These may be to work or the grocery store or to our yoga class. We also have more serious journeys that may take days to complete and may be for stays of long duration. There are different ways to travel and different ways to take along that which we feel we might need. Some ways are faster and some are slower but we choose between trade-offs each time we travel.
I can imagine, however, a world of much easier travel — it wouldn’t be that hard.
