Connections: What travel reveals about belonging

A fairy tree saved me this morning. Really.

I am in my busy season: holidays, packing for my European road trip, and a writing deadline for my draft memoir manuscript. The week flew by, and I hadn’t thought about my Sunday essay once.

And then, this morning, I took a different route to walk Leo to the dog park and came across a lovely tree bending over the sidewalk. A sign tied to one of its branches informed me of its magical properties:

This fairy portal lights up every evening at dusk for only a few hours.If you walk through the portal when it is NOT lit up, we are sorry, but your wish will not come true.

My first reaction was simple delight that I live in a neighborhood where things like this appear from time to time. Then my thoughts went to genies and the proverbial three wishes.

My wishes have been the same since my teens. I keep them ready, just in case a genie crosses my path and the clock is ticking. Susan, you have twenty seconds to tell me your desires.

Good health for me, my family, and my loved ones, always comes first. World peace is wish number two. And the third? I don’t a load of cash, a bottomless credit card magically paid off each month, or a bigger house. I want to speak and understand every language in the world. I want infinite possibilities for human connection.

Being connected is central to how I live, how I operate. And as I prepare to be away for four months—traveling mostly through places where I don’t know the native language—it’s been on my mind a lot. Just this past Friday, a friend asked what I worry about most as I get ready to head to Europe. The answer was easy.

I can handle moving around constantly. Finding my way in a new place, getting lost, even car breakdowns—those are inconveniences, but manageable. Not speaking a common language, though, not being able to connect in deep ways with the people around me, puts me far outside my comfort zone, in a place that doesn’t feel good. That doesn’t feel natural.

How will it feel to float through a host of places, disconnected from people and local culture? Disconnected from community? It’s hard to even imagine.

My childhood set the baseline for this longing. For being on the inside, in the loop.

We lived with my grandmother in her 1,000-square-foot bungalow—the house where my mother grew up—in a working-class neighborhood on Staten Island. Built in 1925, the house sat snug among other small homes in our neighborhood. Almost every house had a front porch and generous front steps, extensions of our tiny indoor living spaces.

Those porches, and the sidewalks and streets that connected them, were my playground. I ran from one to another like they were campsites, finding a friend to play with or stopping to talk to a neighbor. On summer nights, my brothers and I chased fireflies in the street while our parents gathered on someone’s porch, drinking Pepsi and gossiping and laughing. In winter, I built snow forts in front yards; during school vacations, we played baseball at the corner intersection.

That house and those blocks would be called New Urbanist now—the ideal community for growing up, roaming freely within the safe and supportive embrace of neighbors who all knew one another. My experiences there still serve as my model for living: keep people close, help one another out, think of front yards and sidewalks as shared living rooms, and welcome anyone who arrives with a problem to sort out, a story to tell, a casserole in their hands, or an empty cup to fill.

I was connected in every way in that small community. And even now, as I enjoy the benefits of a much larger world, I seek out community and human connection wherever I go. I fear skimming the surface instead of belonging.

And it’s so easy to skim while on the road.

Traveling reveals the absence of human connection. It’s about passing through, often with no magic portal to invite you inside. We cross thresholds into other lives without expecting to fit or belong—and it’s always harder when communication is difficult. When I lived in Italy for a year while my children were young, my very basic Italian left me struggling daily to feel rooted, to be part of local life. To belong.

It’s not the same as language fluency, but I do know the Blue Car acts as its own kind of fairy portal, creating moments of magic wherever we go. Still, it only goes so far without shared language, and I know it won’t be as easy this time as it was two years ago: walking into a café early in the morning, striking up a conversation because the owner noticed my car; talking about a local play to see, streets to explore, a parent who owned a Porsche back when.

The longer the travel, the more I feel the absence of connection.

And it isn’t just about not being able to read the local newspaper or listen in on a nearby conversation at a diner. I can do without constant information flow and constant connectivity. But not without human connection.

This distinction became clear on my U.S. road trip.

In the fall of 2023, I stayed at the Inn at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. There was no internet service, barely a bar on my cell phone. It took a moment to readjust to life without outside contact for four days. Just a moment.

Being disconnected from the larger world enabled stronger human connections. I talked to people on the trails, made friends in the lobby, and sat with strangers at dinner each evening.

Some guests didn’t take it as well. Each night after dinner, I headed to the tables on the second floor of the lobby and opened my laptop to write. The first evening, a steady stream of people approached, hopeful, asking for the Wi-Fi password. Their faces fell when I explained there wasn’t one.

There is no internet here at the Inn.

I wanted to add, Sorry—you’ll have to talk to your spouse. Play with your children. Meet fellow travelers. Write in your journal. I behaved myself and stayed quiet.

The second night, after repeated interruptions, I tore a piece of paper from my notebook, folded it into a tent card, and wrote: There is no Internet here at the Inn. After placing it on the table, I wrote in peace for an hour. Then I went downstairs for a late-night drink and connected with people at the bar. The old-fashioned way.

Remarkably, those conversations are what I remember most.

I saw extraordinary things on my U.S. road trip, and I remember them fondly. But it’s the human connections that endure: Rocco, who helped me with a flat tire; David, who knew the Blue Car wasn’t just blue but Albert Blue; the felt artist in North Carolina who sold me a remnant I later cut into placemats for my dining table.

I am fine without the internet. I am not fine without people.

I can’t pretend this trip won’t be hard at times. Four months is a long time to feel on the outside of things. I don’t have all the answers, but I know what I need. I know the difference between being informed and being connected. I know what I can do without—and what I cannot.

I also believe in the magic of the Blue Car. Not as a guarantee, but as an invitation. And I trust myself to step through whatever temporary openings appear, to linger when I can, to listen closely, and to do the hard work of connection.

Blue Car, let’s see who we meet.