Space & Place
GTJ covers sustainability, conservation, adventure travel and ecotourism, while emphasizing a destination’s character. As told by those who experience life in or through a place.
We understand place as space with meaning. In 1977, the human geographer Yi-Fu Tuan wrote that if space is abstract and universal, place is imbued with meaning by virtue of experiences we have had there. Experience, he said, is the overcoming of perils.
The word “experience” shares the common root per with experiment, expert, and perilous. To experience in the active sense will require you to get out into the unfamiliar, to dally with the uncertain—whether you plan on climbing K2 or taking the kids on their first backpacking trip. The word “adventure” has been defined in many ways, but GTJ runs with anything that requires an element of risk—along with the necessary preparation to confront that risk.
Identity
What gives a place its identity, its aura, its soul? It was said of South Africa’s Lowveld region for example, that “the place gets into your blood.” GTJ’s publisher and executive editor was raised with family roots that reached into the gritty sodic soils of this southern African heritage. The South African National Archives and Record Services in Cape Town have it on record that his great, great, great grandfather stumbled upon Mosi-Oa-Tunya or The Smoke that Thunders, 12 years before David Livingstone discovered what he then named Victoria Falls. Great, great, great Gramps was on a lion hunt. Apparently, one was shot off his back.
Can the love for a locale or region be transferred from generation to generation in a genetic fashion, thereby working its way into the bloodstream? Probably not. But countless individuals have their own unique stories that testify to the way they were grafted into a particular landscape. The Welsh have a word to describe that sense of displacement, homesickness, nostalgia and longing when you have to leave. “Hiraeth” is that pull on the heart that conveys a distinct feeling of missing something irretrievably lost.
These all might be an expression of Tuan’s concept of place. He references a time when physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg visited Kronberg Castle in Denmark. Bohr asked Heisenberg, “Isn’t it strange how this castle changes as soon as one imagines that Hamlet lived here?”
As scientists they may have believed that a castle consisted only of stones. They might have admired the way the architect put them together. None of this should be changed by the fact that Hamlet lived here, and yet, says Tuan, it changed it completely. Suddenly the walls and the ramparts spoke a different language… a dark corner reminded them of the darkness of the human soul, and says Tuan, we hear Hamlet’s, “To be or not to be.”
If you feel you can capture a similar sense in a submission, pitch away.
Personalize that thought while hiking the Israel National Trail. You might consider that David dropped Goliath with his slingshot in that valley, or that Jesus turned water into wine just down the road from the modern-day Cana Wedding Winery. Even a ruined room will echo to the notes of a different score when ensconced in one of those narratives.
Sustainability
Truly sustainable travel should involve local communities and uplift the disadvantaged. It will educate both traveler and locals. National Geographic says that hosts should discover and grow in their own heritage— when they learn that what they may take for granted is compelling to outsiders. GTJ tells the stories that explore the emotional, physical, and spiritual connections between the people and their landscapes, with those around the globe. Each article should depict a commitment to travel that is sustainable, supports local conservation and sanctions cultural heritage.
So, for example, GTJ would welcome a submission from someone who walked the entire route of the Abraham’s Path Initiative, or about the traditional delights of the practice of making a cup of terebinth coffee in a little village on the trail somewhere in southeast Anatolia. Both emphasize the sustainability precept of ecotourism, by benefiting locals.
Your journey to and through a locale should support its integrity of place. Your stories should inspire readers to plan a similar sustainable adventure.
