Small Doses: Little Ways to Feed Your Wanderlust Between Trips
I’ve been obsessing about hosting a honey tasting. My vision is clear: unmarked glass jars of sweet honey along a long charcuterie board with tiny spoons and a variety of yummy platforms. I want to source small batches from three or four beekeepers around central Vancouver Island, and invite guests to discern the differences: wildflower, fireweed, blackberry, seaside, valley farm.
I've been subtly planning this event all summer. Where to find the honey, and what to serve alongside it. I've built the whole evening in my head, including the decor and all the food and drinks that surround the “event.”
Around the fourth iteration, though, I realized that I was making things far too complicated. I wasn’t planning a fun gathering anymore; I was turning the idea into a full-blown production. Fun…but exhausting relative to my capacity right now. So I scaled it back because I really want to do this, and I know myself enough that my happy place is planning, but when the plan spins out of control, nothing at all might happen!
Three honeys, a handful of spoons, a couple of friends. Simple questions: which do you like better and why? This time, I’m going to skip the yellow decor, bee-related playlist, and game-show setup. Simple is actually what I really want; my brain sometimes just takes things too far.
A similar thing happens with travel planning, particularly with those of us who like to maximize opportunities. In fact, I have a trip on the calendar for later this year. Three glorious weeks of city energy in Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, booked with only a couple of months of planning. I thought I might panic that there wouldn’t be enough time to figure it out as deeply as I want. But instead, I think that the smaller runway is keeping me from overplanning and turning it into a complicated “honey-tasting production.”
Even with the not-too-far-away departure, there's still a lot of waiting between now and October. So I've been testing something in the meantime: small versions of the things I already love about travel. I’m engaging my foundational travel interests of food, walking, and photography in small doses NOW, instead of saving them all up for the trip.
Why? Because noticing and responding to what I need right now is, in fact, what I need right now. And that's true whether I’m at home or heading off for a three-week adventure. Here’s what that’s looking like in my life this summer.
Food Bliss, in Small Doses
Food is probably the most flexible interest to play around with. We always have to eat, yet rarely is food just about eating. Sometimes it's about gathering people you love around a table. Sometimes it's about trying something a bit out of your comfort zone. Sometimes it's finding a way to channel your intellectual curiosity onto a plate by building in eating experiments, like my honey tasting idea.
I've noticed I already sort restaurants this way without meaning to. Brie & Barrel is for marking something, the place we book for celebrations, and dress up for. Twin City Brewing is the place where I know my order before I sit down, where it’s casual, easy and always a good time.
The honey tasting is the food experience that started me thinking about making simpler but intentional choices at home that feel a bit like travel, but it's not the only place this has shown up in my kitchen.
Canning was a bigger surprise. I didn't own a single piece of equipment for it, and I developed grandiose plans for a fully stocked cupboard of preserved foods like one of my friends. I was fully prepared to jump in with both feet, invest heavily, research more, and get it all figured out, but then a friend mentioned she had the whole setup already - jars, tongs, the works - and offered to come over and get me started, the simpler way. We spent an afternoon in my kitchen with her stuff, and I’m the proud preparer of 8 jars of relish! My joy didn’t actually need to turn into a full-on life of living sustainably right from the start! Since then, I repeated this process with another friend and am giddy with 8 jars of applesauce!
And then there's the farmer’s market. I tend to think of food and craft markets as a travel thing, the kind of stop that always feels more adventurous when I don't speak the language. My local farmer’s market is ten minutes away, and I hadn't been in months, mostly because I'd stopped thinking of it as a special outing. Simple, yet aligned with how I love to travel. Plus, I can come home with fresh produce I don’t grow myself, from people in my own community. No plane required.
Walking, in Small Doses
Walking plays a large role in my travels, whether it is just getting around, long-distance hiking, or seeing a place new at a blissfully slow pace. Repeat visits to special places with new eyes are a concrete way to get travel pleasure from walking at home. At home, there's a trail I don't visit often: Fossli Park. Every time I have, it's marked something. My kids were still small enough to ride in backpacks on the first visit. Years later, I went with girlfriends and experienced my first cold plunge and swim to a waterfall. That one afternoon still beats plenty of travel experiences I've paid for. I visited again recently, sharing it with someone new to the community.
But my trip that's coming up isn't forest; it's Vienna, Prague, Budapest, three cities built for wandering on foot. I don’t need to wait until October to get a taste of that. Urban exploration is available closer to home; I just need to think about walking differently.
I did a VoiceMap audio guide walk through Victoria a while back, a touristy activity in a city close to home. It was so interesting to let someone else lead me around, instead of navigating by my own sense of what's interesting. I was surprised at how much I learned about a city I’ve lived in, and how many places I’d looked past that have a fascinating story to tell.
Some days I’m choosing an even smaller version of a walking adventure. I park farther away than I need to and walk the last stretch, dropping the drive-everywhere habit that's second nature where I live. Nothing dramatic happens on those walks, but it reminds me that when I travel, I adore navigating by myself.
Photography, in small doses.
My friend Russ has been photographing the same estuary regularly for years, with a huge telephoto lens, endless patience, ten minutes from his house. For him, the repetition of a familiar place isn’t a barrier. If anything, the sameness helps him hone his craft. He knows the local birds and their habits well enough now that his photos are unlike anyone else's who just wanders through once.
Watching him empowers me with my own camera at home. While I’m not a birder, I do realize that during my travels, I get one shot at a shaft of light, one afternoon at a market stall, and if it doesn't work, I'm probably heading out of town before I can try again. So places like my recent trips to Morocco, Spain, or Italy introduce a little photo anxiety. At home there's no such pressure. I can take a bad photo of the same corner of the garden every day for a week, and nothing is lost. I simply have numerous failed attempts that I get to learn from before the stakes are higher. My simple travel practice is to get out my camera and use it on the familiar, engaging a learning attitude and a way to hone my ability to notice and capture things that make great photos.
And sometimes practising observing at home means putting the camera down entirely. When I travel somewhere new, I try not to see the whole place through a lens. I'll leave the camera in my pack and describe it in writing instead, or attempt a sketch. I can practise that here too: journal at the river or fresh sketch pages in my backyard with no pressure to get it right.
Small Doses, For Now
None of this replaces an actual trip.
The honey tasting isn't even comparable to the apple strudel tasting I’m planning in Austria. But did you know that honey tasting experiences can be found in many places around the world? Bratislava (and I’m going there!), Greece (sigh), and the Azores (next year!)…check near you too.
Walking to my library is not on the same playing field as walking along the Danube, or a fantastic urban walking tour exploring Prague.
Using a camera around my own garden isn't the same as noticing the incredible differences in architecture freshly out of the arrivals lounge.
If you're curious, here's how a few of these small doses might just turn into full ones:
But small doses turn out to be a great way to be both present and attuned to everyday wonders, as well as an opportunity to exercise my travel-interest muscles at home.
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