Why We Fly: The Meaning of Travel in a Hyperconnected Age

by Evan Rail

It was supposed to be a routine road a pleasant drive through Hungary's Tokaj wine region on an assignment for Condé Nast Traveler magazine. But there was a small the car, an old Skoda 120 L from the communist era, often simply would not start. The second instead of a bridge across the muddy Tisza river, they were unexpectedly forced to take a ferry, getting to the other side of the river with a dead engine at the front of a long line of Hungarian cars.Thus begins “Why We Fly,” a thoughtful meditation on the meaning of the voyage by the travel writer Evan Rail, the author of more than 70 travel articles for the New York Times. In it, Rail questions the meaning of travel from the perspective of a travel insider, finding unexpected pleasures in the worst moments on the road and asking serious questions about what travel means. When just about everything is available everywhere, what is the point of packing ourselves into aluminum tubes and shipping ourselves to the other side of the earth? Why, in fact, do so many of us fly and drive and ride? And just what kind of jerk was Petrarch, anyway? A 30-page lyric essay, "Why We Fly" is a humorous and erudite investigation into the point of going anywhere at all, and a moving and personal reflection on the nature of journeys, love and family.

37 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 6, 2014

About the author

Born and raised in Central California, Evan Rail studied at UC Davis and at NYU in Paris, where he received his MA. His writing appears in a number of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine and VinePair, where he has a monthly column. His essay Why Beer Matters, an Amazon Top 100 Bestseller, was followed by The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest, an award-winning memoir. His poems and translations have appeared in The New Republic, Zyzzyva, Poetry Review and The Times Literary Supplement (TLS), among other journals. He lives in Prague.

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Reviews

[Annette Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amusing, heart-warming little essay relating the author's take on why we leave the comforts of home to endure the travails of travel.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some well phrased sentences in this essay that give a good reflection of the beauty of travel. Mostly, it's an interesting, OK collection of thoughts and memories of a travel writer.