The End of the Permanent Vacation
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 12.17.02 | 4:02 PM ET
We’ve been following Kate Convissor’s “Permanent Vacation” stories since the day two years ago when she and her family sold everything and hit the road. Last week, after nine stories, the series ended. We’re sad to see it go.
Convissor’s dispatches from throughout North America have been unfailingly honest, entertaining and insightful. She’s also shown just how much impact the simple act of travel can have on a person’s life, as well as the lives around her. In her final story, written several months after the family returned to Michigan, Convissor reveals how her children were affected by their journey. Her son, she writes, has returned with greater confidence and a deeper sense of purpose. She, too, has been permanently changed. “I wanted to be changed,” she writes. “I didn’t want the trip to be simply an 18-month hold ing pattern after which I’d pick up all the balls I’d dropped. I didn’t want to be sucked back into the riptide of rush and hustle, into the jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding, disease-inducing adjectives of the culture I left for a time. I didn’t want to accumulate possessions or meaningless obligations again. So far I haven’t. Part of me simply has not come back from the road, and I hope it never does. I may have lost muscle tone, but I have kept my peace.”
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
