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Real Things in Real Places

“Spend less, see more” -- this has been the candid and standard advice dispensed for 25 years by Seth Kugel, author of “The Frugal Traveler” in the New York Times. Now, in book form -- under the title, Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious -- Kugel codifies his practical approach to travel, updates it to deal with the modern, digitally dependent travel industry, and gets philosophical about the experience of travel.

I’m thinking there’s quite a bit here to inform travel not just globally, but also close to home, on the prairies. I say this as a traveler myself and as one who labors to build the enterprise of grassroots heritage tourism on the Great Plains of North America.

The Frugal Traveler begins his book in “a tidy but fraying town” on the Great Hungarian Plain, where be noses around to find something interesting to experience and write about--and immediately my mind ranges to the American plains out my back door.

I think about the day I pulled into Alice, North Dakota -- which I wish I had described at the time as, in Kugel’s fine phrase, a “fraying town” -- looking for some historical artifacts and failed to find them. Just as I was about to leave town, an old man sitting in front of the bar called out to me, “I thought you were going to ask me about my leg!”

So I asked him about his leg. And he rolled up his trouser leg to expose a prosthetic limb emblazoned with a John Deere logo. I’ve been telling the story about asking fool questions, the resilience of old men, brand loyalty, and the John Deere Leg ever since.

Similarly I love to tell the story how Suzzanne and I were driving down the coast of New South Wales when we saw smoke belching from a stack in a farm town. Diverting, we found a sugar cane processing plant with trucks lined up, waiting to dump loads of chopped cane. So then Suzzanne says, Why don’t we follow one of them?

Which we do, racing across the coastal plains with Dr. Kelley at the wheel like a bat out of hell, ending up in a canefield wherein self-propelled cane cutters were making the rounds. I talked my way into the cab of one of them and rode a few rounds. It’s always a mistake to leave Suzzanne alone in a place like that, because when I dismounted from the cane chopper, there she was at the center of a circle of guys, all of them being regaled by the boss of the crew telling stories to her. I won’t go too deep into this, but a bag of bush lemons played a key part in the narrative.

This is the kind of thing, near or far, that Kugel encourages us to get into. He travels around the world, but also takes delight with a Flint Hills livestock auction he wanders into in Coffey County, Kansas.

“It is time,” writes Kugel, “that we leave a little more of our vacation to chance, take a few extra risks, welcome a bit of unease. In other words, escape the false premise of the modern travel industry ... everything ... conveniently packaged, familiar, and controlled ... exactly like the real world isn’t.”

You have to “dare to adjust your plans when an intriguing possibility materializes, and make those plans flexible in the first place.” Amen to that. I’ve always said, the motto for grassroots tourism on the Great Plains should be, Real Things in Real Places.

“Step it up a notch” -- this is Kugel’s challenge. Talk to strangers. Eat the lutefisk or lamb fries. You don’t need to live dangerously, but live!

Oh and by the way, if you come back from a prairie adventure with stories to tell, come on into my Facebook group for prairie travelers, Heritage Trails, and tell us about them. I’ll warn you, the first liar doesn’t have a chance. Just keep it real.

~Tom Isern

Prairie Public Broadcasting provides quality radio, television, and public media services that educate, involve, and inspire the people of the prairie region.
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