Vici Johnstone - This place a stranger : Canadian women travelling alone

Photo by Vici Johnstone.

I am large

I contain multitudes.

Walt Whitman

I have been fortunate in my life and career to have had many opportunities to travel, sometimes with a companion, but more often than not, alone. I have seen the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, hiked to a monastery in Metora. I swam in the Black Sea, ate in the Carnivore restaurant in Nairobi and spent aimless hours in museums, castles and art galleries. Last year, I spent a warm spring day on Signal Hill in St Johns, Newfoundland, watching an iceberg implode, and in that same season, I drove countless hours through the expansive and diverse terrain that is my own home province of BC.

When I bought Caitlin Press, I knew that the years to come would be busy and that my commitment to rebuilding the press would keep me fairly close to home, at least on the continent. So, as publisher, my first decison was to take a holiday abroad before putting nose to grindstone. It was hardly high adventure, but I booked a flight to Cancun and from there I took a cab to a small resort in Tulums Reserva de le Bisfera Sian Kaan.

It was June and the end of the season in Tulum, so the buses, which would normally shuttle tourists to the ruins and into town had ceased running for the season. After settling in to my hut on the beach, I decided to explore. I walked to the viewpoint at the end of the peninsula where I stood for hours photographing the brown pelicans swirling and dancing in the final throws of the windstorm. I was so fascinated by their grace and agility that I wasnt aware that a man had come up behind me until I felt his breath on the back of my neck and his body pressing into mine. Instinctively, I thrust my elbow backward into his stomach and then turned abruptly to face him. His look of shock turned to dismay and then what appeared to be shame. He disappeared as quickly and quietly as he had surfaced.

Unnerved, I tucked the camera into my bag and hurried back to the tavern in the little village that I had passed earlier. When the waiter came I ordered a bowl of soup to calm my nerves. I pulled out my book and began to read but after a few moments I had the sense that someone was watching me. Expecting the worst (that the man from the peninsula had followed me), I stood up and looked over the sign that advertised fresh tortillas and cold Mexican beer. A small child, perhaps two years of age was looking at me, and when she realised she had caught my attention, she smiled and ducked below the sign. A few seconds later she popped up, squealed and hid again. I laughed and sat down thinking the game was over, but she was clearly entertained by me and we continued to play peek-a-boo for another ten minutes. Eventually, her mother came. She smiled at me as she scooped up her adventurous daughter and left me to finish my lunch.

A few minutes later the waiter returned to my table with my soup. He explained that they were shutting down for the season and had to empty out the fridge and bar. He wondered if I would like a glass of wine and some fresh ceviche to accompany my lunch. Of course I said yes.

On my walk back to the resort, I thought about the little girl and the stark contrast between her and my earlier experience with the man who had taken advantage of my distraction. I wondered what asumption that man had made when he saw a white woman travelling alone. Would he have approached me in such a way if I had been travelling with a man or even a group of friends? I also wondered about the young girl, and her fascination with me. Was I an exotic foreigner or was I appproachable because I was alone? Would I have played with the girl if I had been travelling with a companion? It occurred to me that in some ways they were both trying to engage with me, and the fact that I was a visitor had made me an object of interest. But, that is the thing about travelling alone, isnt it? The very act involves engagement, sometimes welcome, sometimes not. We are not just benign observers and neither are we invisible.

*

When I began to review the submissions for this anthology, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that we had received nearly two hundred stories from across the country. I spent many days as an armchair traveller reading these stories of adventure, tragedy and discovery. The authors had travelled the entire globe it seemed, from northern Canada to East Africa, South Asia and more. It was clear that each woman experienced travel in a different way, and that her socio-economic background and purpose for travel heavily influenced that experience. But these stories shared a common thread: they explored how we move through the world when we are out of our comfort zones, and how being alone heightens both our awareness and our vulnerability.

The idea for this anthology was born from a comment I received from a group of women travellers I encountered on one of my trips. They told me I was brave to travel on my own, and that they would never have the courage. I did not think of the man in Tulum in this moment, but was instead struck by what a loss this was for these women. I received many stories of gender-based violence, and some of them are included here. After all, it is impossible to ignore the cultural realities at home and in the world that make women more vulnerable to such violence. But it is also a tragedy to let such fears prevent us from engaging with new people and places. When we travel alone, without a familiar companion to reflect back to us a familiar self, we are strangersto ourselves and to those around us. The following stories illustrate the many ways, for better or worse, such experiences can change us, reveal us, open a world of understanding.