Patricia Schultz has spent decades traveling and sharing her experiences with us in such books as the #1 New York Times bestsellers “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” and “1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die.” But this time around, she’s not only telling us where to go (in the nicest way possible, of course) but why in her latest book, “Why We Travel: 100 Reasons to See the World.”
“The deeper the dive, the more doors open to opportunity,” Schultz said in a phone conversation last week as she prepared to start a nation-wide book tour that includes a stop in the Chicagoland area.
And Schultz is all about opportunity. A quote-collector, she intersperses beautiful photos of destinations that she’s visited with sayings that she’s gathered through the years.
“I hope this book speaks not only to seasoned travelers but to those who are just starting off as well as those who want to re-start and re-charge after the pandemic,” she said. “I want to remind people that we should try to make time, to visit, to see.”
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But though she includes far-flung destinations, Schultz also notes that some people travel halfway around the world to visit places that are nearby to many of us. That’s an encouragement to explore our own spaces, to look at what there is where we are.
“I’d be sitting in a café somewhere and an epiphany would happen,” she said. “Travel is how you find yourself. That is how you find whatever makes you happy.”
Likely, each person reading her book will take away a quote that really strikes a personal chord. For me, it was the glass is half full not half empty, “Fill your heart with gratitude for what you’ve done, not regret for what you haven’t.”
For her, travel is also about meeting people, understanding cultures and seeing and sensing the world through the eyes of those whose world she steps into. That includes the food.
“First we eat, then we do everything else,” Schultz quotes M.F.K. Fisher, the great food writer, as saying.
The love of travel started early for Schultz. She was four and sitting in the backseat of her parent’s station wagon as they took a summer trip. She remembers the window being open and the wind on her face, hearing the sounds of the seagulls and smelling the ocean.
Schultz threw a tantrum as that vacation ended. And though she doesn’t have tantrums anymore, she still feels the sadness of not wanting a visit to end. But then she embraces the move forward as she is off on to the next adventure.
Like her travels, she is moving on in other ways and is now gathering ideas for her next book. Going forward is the only way, she said. In her book, she summarizes that feeling in a quote by George Balanchine, one of the most influential 20th-century choreographers. It is her way of urging us on.
“What are you waiting for?” he would ask his dancers. “What are you saving for? Now is all there is.”
