Travelling beauty 

Whether we are healing from pandemic trauma, personal tragedy, or other mental or physical health challenges, travel has an ability to play a critical role in the recovery journey, research shows.In February 2022, Adam Sawyer lost his whole world. A catastrophic fire burned down his house near Mount Rainier and claimed his partner’s life. In the year since, Sawyer has frequently set out into nature, often retracing the trails he walked—and journeys he took—with his late partner.

“I was purposefully going to places that she and I had traveled to together before. It seems like a means of self-flagellation, but it was also a way to really lean into the grieving process,” says Sawyer, who writes about travel and the outdoors. “I would go somewhere on a trail as far as I could go, and I would cry for as long as I needed to. In going to these places, it was a way of acknowledging the pain and acknowledging what I was going through and also bridging the gap sooner to get to where those memories were hopeful and pleasant.”

For Sawyer, traveling to places that were meaningful to him and his late partner, in addition to other “road trips to nowhere” or treks into nature (he’s been spending a lot of time driving up and down the Oregon coast, for instance, appreciating “the scenery and that zen of driving through pretty country”), has been an integral part of the healing voyage.

“Traveling to these places and trying to process those memories—when I do that, when I have those crying sessions, when I deal with the guilt in those places, it’s akin to getting it over with, like vomiting. I cried it out and I processed that and I understand what that memory means to me now and why I came here and I actually feel better,” says Sawyer.