THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, April 4 - 5, 2020 |D5
IN THESE ANXIOUStimes, befud-
dled by uncertainty, we are told not
to travel or we’ll get sick. But travel
has traditionally been associated
with risk and the unknown, and of-
ten with illness; yet the warnings
are wickeder than that: These days,
travel is emphatically linked to
death. There are healthy alterna-
tives—the car trip, the bike ride, the
long walk—but what if you heed the
directive to stay put? There is a
whole shelf of books that ruminateson the value of being home.
Consider the compressed but
highly original travel book, called
“Voyage Autour de ma Chambre”
(“A Journey Round My Room”),
written by Xavier de Maistre, when
he was under house arrest in Turin
in 1790 for 42 days. In a deliberate
attempt to stave off the boredom of
his confinement, De Maistre de-
scribes his visits to his mantelpiece
and his sofa, and his desk, and much
else within his four walls. A soldierand a landscape painter, he wrote
(with a wink) of the “new mode of
traveling I introduce to the world.”
Emily Dickinson was housebound
for much of her life and justified it
by writing to a friend, “To shut our
eyes is Travel.” Henry David Tho-
reau rejoiced in his cabin on Walden
Pond (but his mother baked him
pies and did his laundry). The 12th-
century Japanese aristocrat Kamo
no Chōmei rusticated himself to a
tiny hut in the mountains alone, “afriend of the moon and the wind.”
He added in his chronicle of the ex-
perience, “The Ten Foot Square Hut
and Tales of the Heike,” “My only
luxury is a sound sleep and all I look
forward to is the beauty of the
changing seasons.”
In the Staying Home chapter in
my “The Tao of Travel” (2011) I de-
scribed these literary staycations,
and some others. Travelers mad-
dened by the coronavirus warnings
may find possible solutions in this
anthology. For most people, the ad-
vice—amounting almost to a com-
mand—to self-isolate means con-
finement; for habitual travelers it is
something like punishment.
But we often encounter a sort of
confinement in travel, too: the de-
layed plane, the stranded bus, the
washed-out road or derailed train,
and for the wealthy there is splen-
did isolation in the gated resort or
spa. Now these experiences all in-
volve occasions for infection. After
nine travel books involving trains
and ships and kayaks and chicken
buses, I decided that the ultimate
freedom in travel lies in the road
trip—setting off in your own car.
For my book “Deep South” I
drove from my home in New Eng-
land and meandered in eccentric
circles through the south. It was a
journey I found so satisfying and
enlightening that when the Mexican
border became a contentious sub-
ject I took to the road again, travel-
ing the length of the border and
then across it to Mexico profundo,
motoring the length of the country
alone into the Chiapas of the Zap-
atistas. It is possible to be self-iso-
lated in your car journey, but this
does not take into account the bac-
terial risks in restaurants, gas sta-
tions or motels. Maybe the ideal
would be to make the road trip in
rural areas, with camping equip-
ment and food, under the spell of
Defoe’s “A Journal of the Plague
Year.” I often fantasize about driv-
ing north to Quebec, into Montreal
and through my ancestral village of
Yamaska, and onward past Val-d’Or
and the forests and swamps, to
pitch my tent on the shore of Hud-
son Bay, savoring the cold clean air
the voyageurs inhaled.
Sulking indoors for the duration
of this crisis is an obnoxiousthought, and it calls up images of
other plagues—the atmosphere of
Albert Camus’s novel “The Plague,”
the miasma at the end of Thomas
Mann’s “Death in Venice,” and per-
haps the most vivid and violent
plague description of all, that re-
counted by Thucydides in his “His-
tory of the Peloponnesian War,”
the fatalism, misery, lawlessness
and fear of the plague in Athens.
“So great a plague and mortality
of men was never remembered to
have happened in any place before,”
in David Grene’s translation. “For at
first neither were the physicians
able to cure it through ignorance of
what it was but died fastest them-
selves, as being the men that most
approached the sick.”The best antidote to being
housebound, the answer to the li-
censed scolders, is to take a long
walk. It was always Thoreau’s
habit—his essay “Walking” is inspi-
rational. Walking was William
Wordsworth’s passion (at age 70 he
climbed Helvellyn, in the English
Lake District). Early in his life, the
director Werner Herzog walked 500
miles from Munich to Paris to visit
the sickbed of fellow director Lotte
Eisner. “Tourism is a mortal sin,”
Herzog said later, “but walking on
foot is a virtue.”
Walking isn’t challenged by the
CDC or the government. It is an ex-
pression of absolute freedom and it
can be accomplished in a safe and
solitary way, near home or in the
solitude outside of town. One of
walking’s greatest benefits is that it
allows us time to reflect—on our
lives, on our fate, on the state of the
world, and figure things out.Soliv-
itur ambulandois the classical pre-
scription, the noble motto of the pe-
destrian. “It is solved by walking.”Mr. Theroux’s most recent book
is “On the Plain of Snakes: A
Mexican Journey” (Houghton Miff-
lin Harcourt).Sulking indoors for the
duration of this crisis is
an obnoxious thought.TRAVELERSTALE/VETERANVOYAGERPAULTHEROUXONTHEAGONYANDSOLACEOFSELF-ISOLATION
A Wanderer’s Guide
To Staying Home
PASCAL CAMPION
WRAP OF THE IRISHSince
1723, the Irish company Av-
oca has been proffering
throws woven from the
wool spun at a mill in
County Wicklow. These
days, its shops across the
country sell all things cozy,
from teapots to Christmas
cake, but the brand’s hand-
wovenblankets—in mohair,
lamb's wool, cashmere and
Donagel wool—remain its
signature ware. Order online
until you make it over to
tour the mills in scenic
Wicklow, known for its wild-
flower-dotted scenery and
abundant gardens(from
about $85, avoca.com).A TOASTY DANISHAfter
training in silversmith Georg
Jensen’s workshop in Copen-
hagen, designer Kay Bojesen
turned to wood in the 1950s,
carving it into monkeys, dogs
and elephants that were sim-
ple but not humorless.Bojesen’s animals remain cel-
ebrated pieces of Danish de-
sign, and the lamb’s wool chil-
dren’s blanket from the legacy
brand pays homage. Unfold it
to see a Bojesen monkey
dancing between leaves
($150, illumsbolighus.com).A GLIMPSE OF INDIAIn
Kashmir, craftspeople practice
embroidery as a form of med-
itation: Every stitch is a
prayer. It takes nonstop nee-
dlework to embellish a blan-
ket like the ones made for An-
draab, a shawl specialist that
uses weaving techniques
from 15th-century Persia—
which makes their fabrics al-
most impossibly fine. The
House of Things, an e-shop
based in Udaipur, sells An-
draab’s blankets, both the
Patta Wool stitched with a
classic leaf design and mod-
ern cashmere pieces in solid
colors. If you browse the other
contemporary Indian handi-crafts on the site, you might
be moved to pair those deli-
cate throws with Jaipur Rugs’
hand-knotted carpets or
leather-and-tweed ottomans
from New Delhi(from about
$300, thehouseofthings.com).MEXICAN FRINGE BENEFIT
On the outskirts of Mexico
City, the village of Guadalupe
Yancuictlalpan has been a
hub for weavers and knitters
for 200 years. The weavers
at Tapetes Gualupita use
pedal looms to make rugs,
cushions, wall hangings and
quilts. Crafted from natural
cotton and wool and dyed
with vegetables and minerals
sourced from within Mexico,
they come in muted shades:
gray, white and black-and-
white. Peppy details, such as
pompoms and thick fringes,
ensure these classics
aren’t dull(from about $37,
tapetesgualupita.com)
—Eimear LynchF. MARTIN RAMIN/ THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, STYLING BY ANNE CARDENAS
Restlessly hunkering down at home? Here, four blankets you can order
to evoke travel—and support far-flung artisans while you’re at it‘Souvenirs’ for Shut-Ins
Tapetes
Gualupita’s
‘popcorn quilt,’
made by pedal
looms outside
Mexico City.Avoca’s Wicklow
Gap Mohair
throw, handwoven
in Ireland’s County
Wicklow.ADVENTURE & TRAVEL
Staying home
saves lives.
For more information, visit
coronavirus.gov