When I left my hometown in 2021 I knew that I would’ve loved to travel and discover new realities. I had the chance to do an exchange year during high school. This was an incredible experience: it was the first but not the last one. I’m currently studying at university in France and I’ve had the opportunity to go to many different places such as Italy, Malta, the USA or Canada. Of course, I’m planning to go to new places soon: let’s start from Leeds!
I’m a very lucky person because I’ve managed to travel a lot during my studies. Travelling made me understand what really means to be alive and that my own culture and traditions are only a small reality compared to what the world has to offer. There’s so much to learn about and there are so many wonderful places that exist on Earth: the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon rainforest, all the National Parks in the USA or, closer to us, the Alps. These are just a few examples proving that we live in a very diverse planet and therefore we should take care of it. The diversity that characterizes our Earth is something unique, but most people tend to ignore it. Nature, as well as animals and plants should be taken more into account, especially while travelling.
During my studies I’ve taken a few classes about ecocriticism and we talked about Rob Nixon and his work called “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor”. His work deals with many interesting notions and concepts, but the relevant one for us is slow violence. It is a term used to talk about a kind of violence that is gradual and that has delayed effects. What people are doing with our planet is, indeed, an example of slow violence. Even if the consequences are not immediately noticeable, it does not mean they are not going to occur afterwards. People should be even more careful. However, this does not mean that people need to stop travelling, they just need to do it in eco-friendly ways, starting by avoiding airplanes or taking the car to go everywhere. When I was in the USA, I heard that a lot of people took the car to cover small distances when they could simply have taken public transportation. In my small way, I tried to avoid taking the airplane as much as I could: I took the train to go from Seattle to Portland and I took the Greyhound to go to Vancouver, in Canada. I’ll always remember this bus ride, the landscapes where amazing!
To conclude, I’m trying to do my best to take care of our Earth while enjoying travelling and discovering new places. Respecting the planet does not mean people cannot travel, they just need to do it in eco-friendly ways. This is what I’ll do while travelling in the United Kingdom as well, trying to find the better solution to get around!
References:
– https://www.chronicle.com/article/Slow-Violence/127968
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Violence_and_the_Environmentalism_of_the_Poor
