The Art of Liminal Travel

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Liminality refers either to things that are emerging or to things that are in an in-between state, such as between places, life situations or kinds of social status. It was originally used to describe rituals that marked someone’s movement from one state to another, as between childhood and adulthood.

Considering this, travel is an activity that would seem to be liminal by its very nature. When we are traveling, we are always *in between* our point of departure and our destination. So, in a way, travel is always liminal. However, modern civilization seems intent on making the experience of travel more and more predictable. When we also factor in the unfortunate reality that more and more places are looking similar to one another (the same kind of highways, fast food chains, airports, etc.), and it seems that travel is not as liminal as it once was.

The ultimate in liminal travel would be the old-fashioned explorer’s spirit found in history books and novels, from Huckleberry Finn to Gulliver’s Travels. Today, many of the most liminal types of travel are hardly practiced anymore. Consider, for example, hitchhiking. In the 1960s and for a while beyond, the hitchhiker, while not exactly respectable, had an aura of freedom and adventure. Now, most people would never consider hitchhiking or picking up someone on the road with his thumb out. People do, of course, still hitchhike. I haven’t hitchhiked myself recently, but I give rides to a handful of hitchhikers every year. The point is, it’s becoming both uncommon and less socially acceptable.

A somewhat more respectable, yet still liminal way to travel is the romanticized “road trip” so common in American movies. A true road trip must be a largely spontaneous journey. If it is all planned in advance down to the slightest detail, it is merely sightseeing or motel-hopping. I wonder how many people still engage in this practice and how many prefer to watch such adventures in movies.

The packaged tour is the very opposite of liminal travel, as it aims to make every aspect of the journey pre-planned and predictable. This means that, while we may still be “liminal” in the physical sense of going from one point to another, we are largely losing any unique experience of these in-between spaces.

I find one of the most liminal ways to travel nowadays to be long distance train rides. This is still one of the most popular ways to travel in Europe, both for tourists and Europeans. Even in America, where rail travel is almost as anachronistic as hitchhiking, you can take Amtrak across the country or up and down the East or West coasts. While traveling by train can still be part of the tourist industry, there is something about the pace and motion of a train that is conducive to contemplation and appreciating the world around you. It is also probably the most social way to travel, as you can meet people in the dining car or observation lounge.

In the end, liminality is more about your own state of mind when traveling than about how you travel physically. You can set out to have an open-minded, adventurous spirit no matter what mode of transportation you choose, even if you do take packaged tours (which do have advantages, such as being sometimes more reasonable than alternatives). The key is to appreciate and even seek out those interesting “spaces in between” rather than trying to fill them up with the familiar and predictable.

Larry Christopher is a writer and researcher on many topics, including cultural issues, the arts and metaphysics. For more about liminal travel, visit:

http://www.liminaltravel.info

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