There's a word for It: Hodophobia

No more hodophobia for me...

There’s this new thing on Facebook now that shows you on a map the places you visited.  Don’t worry, FB cynics and conspiracy theorists, we are assured only we, the owners of our page, can see this.  Well, really, who cares?  I think its interesting and the bottom line for me is, who cares who knows where in the world I have been?  Me, of course.

I looked at the map and it had recorded my visits to Rome, Florence, Portovenere and Venice in Italy in May.  Really?  I was in Italy?   I visited all those places?  Me?  Really?  I find it hard to believe. It all seems a bit like a dream.  And on the other hand, the trip made Italy seem very real.  It is not just an imagined place.  It really exists and it really can be visited.  Imagine that.

So I started thinking about all the places I have been fortunate enough to visit.  There are very few states I have not been to over the years. Alaska, Maine, Alabama, Mississippi, oh, ya, Vermont and New Hampshire.  But I have been to most, or at least driven through.  And many I want to go back to to explore more.  Can anyone imagine a motor trip?  Have Suburu will travel...dogs in tow...it could happen.

As far as outside the States, well, there is Canada and Mexico.  Eastern Australia.  The British Isles.  The Bahamas.  That’s pretty much it.  And those were trips with long travel gaps between.  Each time I’ve gone, I’ve come back wanting to go more.  Travel, they say, is broadening.  It makes what seems to be a huge world somehow smaller, more accessible.  And people are people no matter where you are.  They may look and dress and speak differently, so differently you may not understand them or they you, but the bottom line is, people are people are people.

When I don’t travel for a while, even just a year or so, I slip into hodophobia.  Hodophobia?  Ha, no, I didn’t know that term either.  I had to google “fear of traveling” to find the term for it.  It comes from the greek word for “path” or “journey”.  Hmm.  Look it up.  The symptoms can be quite severe including panic attacks, sweats, anxiety, stomache distress and more.  Oh my.  I actually do experience some of those conditions.  But thank goodness I rally myself and move on.  At least most of the time.

So glad I didn’t let hodophobia keep me from Italy.  That would have been a shame.  And now that I have a name for it, I can deal with it better.  And the cure, of course, it more travel!  I told several people to be careful encouraging me to go.  It might unleash the itchy foot.  I might find it hard to stay “down on the farm”.  Just sayin’, it’s big world out there.  It would be a shame not to see more of it.

---