Far from the Madding Crowd

In planning a start date for my 2026 road trip, I have been trying to get to Europe in winter, two months before I arrive there in early spring, to ensure the trip is over before it begins.

At least it seems that way.

As my start date has crept from early April to mid-March, and then “latish” February, and now to February 15^th (where I am committed it will stay), I am reminded of Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen.” In this hilarious comedy skit involving four men all competing for the most miserable “good old days” experience, one says, when I was young, “I had to get up in the morning at 10 o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed…to get to work on time.”

Why am I leaving for my trip earlier and earlier in the new year?

To avoid the crowds.

To be clear, I don’t have enochlophobia or agoraphobia. I am fine standing packed shoulder to shoulder with thousands at a concert, and Times Square on New Year’s Eve would be no sweat. My problem is crowds where they shouldn’t be, where they detract from being in the moment: I don’t want to stand in long lines for museums, make reservations weeks in advance for a great meal, or sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic instead of driving the Blue Car down curving roads with the beautiful countryside flying by.

In the past, I never worried about traveling during busy tourist season because I didn’t have a choice; my three kids were in school, and we were stuck traveling during summer and school vacation breaks. One of the perks of this empty nester life I now lead is picking my travel times. I am trying to make the most of it.

Each summer, my Instagram and Facebook feeds are cluttered with photos showing streets packed so tightly with people in Prague, Barcelona, and other cities that I wonder how anyone can move, or enjoy the experience. Even small towns in Japan can’t escape the crush and the ongoing protests aimed at tourists in Spain seem set to stay.

It all calls to mind “the madding crowd” – novelist Thomas Hardy’s description of a frenzied and noisy mass of people acting madly and without reason. And I say, “no thank you.”

This doesn’t mean I dislike people. Far from it: I am a social creature by nature, and I love talking to locals, chatting with my fellow humans, and soaking up the rhythm of life around me. None of this happens when the madding crowd is swarming. Over packed streets, long lines at top destinations, congested roads, and high tempers don’t add up to a peaceful and reflective travel experience.

When visiting Italy with my young children, I followed advice from Italian friends and got to the Vatican Museums on a Sunday morning a full hour before opening time, hoping to avoid the common three-hour wait on a line that was known to wind endlessly around surrounding blocks and streets. We ate pastries and played word games while waiting, happy in the knowledge that there were only 30 people in the thin line in front of us. We would be in the Sistine Chapel without the crowds and see other popular artworks without pushing and shoving! I was very pleased with myself.

As the minutes ticked by, we noticed the line was getting wider and wider in front of us. Then I heard someone mention the Museums were free that day, the last Sunday of the month, a day popular with Italian tourists. As we watched in amazement, every visitor that day seemed to have an aunt, a cousin, or a long-lost coworker in front of us. There were constant shouts of “Hey, Luigi (or insert whatever name you wish here), so good to see you after all these years, mind if I join you in line?” Yes, the line stretched farther than we could see behind us, but in front of us? That 30-person line now numbered in the hundreds. There is no exact word for “queue” in Italian (surprised?) so technically no one was “jumping the queue.” We could only laugh and accept the cultural experience with good grace. But this was not the case for the angry and vocal foreign tourists around us. Our peaceful morning and my satisfaction at “beating the line” evaporated.

These things happen on home soil as well. Just three years ago, I naively embarked on a leaf peeping excursion (yes, this is a thing in New England in the autumn) in Vermont with visiting Danish friends. It was a holiday weekend, and the sugar maple leaves were blazing brilliant shades of gold and red on the mountainsides. The trip from Woodstock to Stowe should have been an hour and a half. As we got close to Stowe, we came to a dead stop on the highway, six miles from our destination. We sat. And sat. And sat in traffic some more. Eight hours after we had started our trip, we arrived at the mountain gondola just as it closed for the day, missing the trip to the top to survey autumn in all her glory.

Then, there are times when the crowds don’t cause long waits, but they do impede upon the anticipated serenity and wonder of the moment.

I grew up watching a TV show called “Wild Kingdom.” Every Sunday evening, I would pile onto the sofa with my brothers and settle down to watch mama leopards caring for their young, and eagles swooping in for the kill on poor little mice. The show was a window into an alternate world of wild beasts and mother nature and later, as a budding photographer, I grew to appreciate photographs of animals in nature…the moose with snow-tipped antlers in the forest, the fox leaping through the air toward its unsuspecting prey.

So, when my itinerary coincided with a five-day wildlife photography tour in Grand Teton National Park during my US road trip, I jumped at the chance to do some of my own, albeit amateur, wildlife photography. I quickly realized I had never thought about what occurred at the other end of the camera lens as I was watching animals in the wild on TV or gazing at a large glossy print in a gallery. I had some fuzzy notion of a lone photographer sitting quietly in the wild, waiting for the perfect Zen moment of connection with the animal as the shutter snapped.

In Grand Teton that week in early October, my expectations quickly collided with reality when I had my first shocking experience with a “bear jam.” This is a bit like a traffic jam in the heart of midtown Manhattan on a Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, except it involves photographers and tourists from all over the world crowding the roads of the park, knowing the grizzly bears will be out in full force, fattening up before their winter slumber. I was part of a lineup of photographers, numbering in the hundreds, all jostling (mostly with good nature) for the best place to erect their tripod and get that perfect photo of mama grizzly bear and her cubs playing in the field. We were all there together in that one small place in the National Park because word travels quickly by cell phone and radio from group to group when photographers are on the prowl, and if you see a car stopped by the side of the road, you stop too (a bit like lemmings to the sea except hopefully one doesn’t get eaten by a grizzly).

My photos of mama bear and her cubs make it look like that serene moment when I was one with nature when in fact, the constant click of shutters created a symphony around me, punctuated by the Park Ranger bass section yelling at people to move back the required 100 yard distance while telling rubbernecking drivers to “move on” and “no slowing down.” To my amazement, the Rangers knew how close we were because they were measuring the distance with laser devices. Serene? No. Zen moment? No. But I can’t complain. It was magic in its own way. Just not the way I had expected.

Yes, I want to avoid waiting in lines that grow and grow in width, I want to avoid sitting in traffic for eight hours and missing the gondola ride, I want to be at one in nature with mama grizzly and her cubs. But if I dig down below these things I understand that at the heart of my desire to be “far from the madding crowd” is my search for “authentic” experiences.

The irony here is I am not always sure what “authentic” is and I know that a basic principle of observation is that we change the scene, alter environment, and affect the outcome, just by being present and watching. As a city planner, I work with cities and towns in arts and culture, economic development, and tourism. When I use the word “authentic” with clients it means we want something to be true to the essence of a place and the people who call it home. We want to ensure that the choices on offer and the experiences of locals and visitors are not manufactured. We want a spontaneous and real experience, not a Disneyland fantasy. Space Mountain and Mickey can be fun, but I don’t want that to be every trip I take.

As I plan my road trip, I think I can simplify this desire for an “authentic” experience by just focusing on the local. I want to drive local roads, meet local people, eat where locals eat, and live at a local pace. And the Blue Car makes it easier to do all these things. I don’t need to stick to the major cities and towns accessible by good public transportation. This trip is about going to a range of places including some I wouldn’t normally visit, trying to get off the highways and well-traversed roads when possible.

Yes, starting this trip in mid-February means I will most likely have cold and rainy days in Normandy, and the vineyards will be brown and bare as I make my way through Bourdeaux. There will be no beach days if I find myself on the Côte d'Azur. But the slower pace and less-congested streets will offer other opportunities. And the Bavarian Forest in Germany will be magical at any time, and I will see English gardens in bloom in May. I have also heard the Arctic Circle in early June is just about perfect…the snow will most likely be gone and the tourist throngs may not be there yet.

I do know that I can only prepare for so much. Every time The New York Times publishes a new article about the “25 Undiscovered Gems of Europe,” my heart sinks and I think, “undiscovered no longer.” There is an uncomfortable element of elitism here…why am I more special than any other traveler? I am not. But I can still yearn for that special experience and feeling of discovery. And I can still plan as best I can, focusing less on checking boxes of “must see” sights and more on untethered exploration of the everyday and the routines that make a place unique.

If all this fails, I have a secret weapon—my penchant for sunrise moments. My early morning starts often find me alone at the edge of a river, on the crest of hill, or on quiet streets in the dawning light. During those times, I can keep the madding crowds at bay for a few hours in even the craziest of tourist seasons. I can aspire to be the heroine in Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd,” who says, “I shall be up before you're awake, I shall be afield before you're up, and I shall have breakfasted before you're afield. In short, I shall astonish you all.”