The absurdity of my socks

By Chris Barton

“Your trip hinges on socks.”

These are the words I have written, in large, underlined letters at the top of a list called “lessons learned.” I wrote this list on the last page of the journal I kept last summer while backpacking through Europe (with distractingly aching feet). This list was to help me prepare for my next adventure.

My next adventure – the Walton Global Sustainability Studies Program in Brazil this summer – is immanent, and I have six sets of high-quality running socks sitting on my dresser with a box of Clif bars, a leak-proof toiletry set and a travel pillow. These things are on their way to a larger pile of clothes and books that will all eventually find their way into my backpack, onto a plane and to Brazil. Although I would have expected this stack of supplies serve as a constant reminder of the coming trip, more than anything else, it is just a pile of things, disconnected from both the present and the travel at hand.

Trips like this, extended adventures in foreign places, never seem real in the weeks leading up to them. I know that in theory, come the end of the month, I will be in Sao Paulo, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around what that means. I don’t know what to expect in Brazil, and I guess I won’t know until I get there. If this trip is anything like the ones I’ve taken in the past to Europe and Central America, then it will only be after the fact that everything sinks in and I find myself actually coming to terms with what transpired during my adventure.

Travel can be both incredibly surreal and completely genuine. The absurdity hits first during preparation. At this point Brazil is still a far-off land, distinct and mystical. Sao Paulo is no less fantastical than Mars, no more comprehendible at this distance than another planet. What would it be like to go to Mars? Yes, the metaphor is silly, but that is the point. Preparing for a trip such as this means preparing for something incongruous to everyday life. The socks only hold purpose in theory. They are strange artifacts meant for another mode of life: travel in Brazil.

But soon I’ll put the socks on. The abstract, previously unknowable world of Brazil will begin to manifest once I land in Sao Paulo. The absurdity of the impending experience will give way to the experience itself, and Brazil will become concrete and tangible. Only once the trip begins will it actually seem real.

I’m entirely unsure what Brazil holds for me. It’s silly to try to make predictions about something that, until I get there, is enigmatic and surreal. Experience has taught me that when it comes to travel, you find what you expect to find and nothing else. Assumptions and predictions function as blinders. I want to be totally open to whatever Brazil holds for me, both as an academic excursion and as a personal adventure. I do know one thing for sure, though:

I will be wearing really comfy socks.