Erin Austen Abbott - Family Field Trip: Explore Art, Food, Music, and Nature with Kids

TO ALL THE TRAVELERS, EXPLORERS, AND CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, FROM HOME AND AFAREVEN IF YOU CANT SEE IT, YOU CAN BE IT. FOR SEAN AND TOM OTIS, MY FAVORITE TRAVEL PARTNERS. TO MY MOM, THANK YOU FOR SHOWING ME THE WORLD. AND TO LISA, STAY ON THE LONG, QUIET HIGHWAY, MY FRIEND. ILL FIND YOU AGAIN.

When I was a very young girl growing up in Oxford, Mississippi, my mom would often pack up our station wagon and take my brother and me out on a long road trip. Wed wind through the South, slowly making our way down to Florida. Sometimes wed stop in New Orleans to eat beignets and slurp Vietnamese noodle bowls or ride through Atlanta, stopping for fried chicken and fresh peach pie. I would spend the hours in the car staring out the window, observing, daydreaming, and snapping mental images of all the places I wanted to come back to and visit one day. Every trip was different, as we rarely took the same route to get to our yearly destination.

When we arrived in Florida, wed spend our days at the beach, then gather around a large table at night, enjoying peel-and-eat shrimp, laughing, and talking. Usually we were joined by family friends from abroadpeople from countries I hadnt yet visited. These friends taught us foreign words and phrases, and sometimes they prepared dishes I wasnt familiar with. It was during those meals that I learned some of the Southern staples I took for granted, like sweet tea and hush puppies, were not on menus around the world. Those mealsfull of new languages, tastes, and customsmade the world seem so much bigger to me.

It was those early years and my experiences with travel and culture that informed many of the decisions I made in the decades that followed. It also shaped how I went on to raise my own child. In college, I got my bachelor of science degree in Early Childhood Education from the University of South Florida in Tampa. I figured that with that degree I could always find a job anywhere I wanted to live (rather than my job determining where I had to live), and hoped that I could find a job working for a family that was looking for a homeschool teacher. I then went on to study photography in graduate school at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, in Boston, and The Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle. It was those years of studying photography that really opened my eyes to what I love most about art, which is capturing the moments. I love to walk through the streets of a town Ive never visited and capture the sense of the place or search out something that might only exist for a short amount of time, yet with street and documentary photography, it can live on forever. Maybe its an old building or a found hand-painted sign, all preserved in photographic imagery.

I spent several years after graduate school teaching at a Montessori school in Seattle, and then in my mid-twenties, I got offered a job that would change my life. It wasnt in my plan, but knowing Id never get this same opportunity again, I jumped at the chance. That life-changing call was to work for a touring band. I was offered the job of selling their merchandise for them on the road. I visited more than fifteen countries that way. When we pulled into a new venue, I would rush to set up my work so that I could spend the rest of the day exploring the city. I would try to avoid tourist haunts as much as possible, spending most of my time in areas where locals went about their daily lives. I would visit grocery and drugstores for small souvenirs, such as a box of bobby pins in India, a tube of toothpaste in Italy, or a tin of biscuits in England. Id pop into the post office for some stamps, or the local cafe just to sit and journal and people watch for a bit. I was being paid to travel and I loved it.

After selling merchandise for six years, I transitioned to being a travel nanny for several families, including the families of band members in Mates of State and The Flaming Lips, and the family of a NASCAR driver. These jobs allowed me to go on trips that I never could have imagined. A ten-day cruise through the south of France, stopping in places like Sardinia, Corsica, and Monaco. Multiple trips to St. Barts. Visits to a private home overlooking cliffs in Mexico. While some of the trips were luxurious and not attainable for an average family, we were often near walkable areas where I could get out with the children and explore the town. Every morning, Id take the children through the local market as the vendors set up, then wed pop into a foreign grocery store to learn a few food words in the local language (this was before smartphones and apps) or visit a cafe for a morning coffee, usually finding one with sidewalk seating so we could sit and watch the town wake up. Every day felt like a field trip.

Eventually, I made my way back to Mississippi, where I met my husband, Sean, and we had our son, Tom Otis. Sean was a touring musician for over a decade of his adult life. Before picking up the guitar, he spent the summers of his youth in the wilderness of Canada at his familys summer cottage and on backpacking excursions with his nature photographer dad and two brothers. Sean and I wanted to give Tom Otis the chance to explore the world as we did, and learn from our combined adventures and backgrounds. For our family, doing cultural activities near and far from home has been a great way to allow Tom Otis to discover new things and learn the art of travel.