Travel Series: Bluffton
During a normal summer, my family would have loved to drive to Bluffton, South Carolina to meet new people and walk the picturesque streets. We would have explored the center of town mere minutes from our rented cottage, or tasted all the fruit and seafood at the vibrant farmer’s market, well known and beloved by locals and tourists alike.
But this wasn’t a normal summer. For the safety of myself and my family, we couldn’t do all of those activities without fear or risk of COVID-19. What Bluffton provided, though, was more than I could have hoped for: insight on the beauty and vitality of reflection.
For so long I had seen travel as an action rooted in productivity. Even in the context of art, so often travel is viewed as a catalyst for creation and stimulation. A tradition grounded in seeing all the sights and doing all the things, or risking not “making the most of it.”
It never occurred to me that travel could be just for me. And so after months quarantined in my childhood home, that’s what I found Bluffton could be: a space for me to pause and enjoy.
Every day, I hopped on my bike — my mask in my back pocket and camera in the front basket — and I explored. I rode through and past the center of town, passing residents and visitors on their way to get groceries or leisurely walking to the beach by the nearby lake. Despite knowing none of them, almost everyone I passed waved and smiled at me. The quirks of Bluffton showed themselves once I noticed a pet cemetery on my ride, in which lie pets who had died in the 1920s.
Once I passed the town and the beach, though, I rode through biking trails seemingly built for a fantasy character. The dusted and rocky roads were lined by trees covered in Spanish moss, silky to the touch and gorgeous to the eye, reflecting the sunlight across the trail below.
Eventually, the trees started to canopy above me, winding and whisping around each other, as if they were waving hello to me, inviting me in, asking me to enjoy the ride. I found breaks in the trees, opening up to wide pastures of purple-tinged grass and deep blue lakes. I turned off the music in my headphones and listened intently as I rode past little animals scampering across, seemingly unaware of the busy city mere miles away.
I may not have been particularly productive during my trip to Bluffton — truth be told, I did very little but sleep, read a little poetry, bike on whichever path caught my eye and take some photos of the nature surrounding me — but I am okay with that.
One of my new favorite authors, Jeanette Winterson, said that “cities are aspirational.” When she said that, though, she was talking about the hustle and bustle of New York City and the high rises of London. The kind of metropolis that inspires people to move fast, to look upwards towards success and mobility. And I do believe these cities have wonderful merit worthy of aspiring to.
Yet, Bluffton was aspirational for me. Not in the way it forced me to run but in the way it gave me the space to slow down, to open myself up and breathe in air crisper than I had ever breathed.