There’s a book called The Snow Geese: A Story of Home, written by a fellow named William Fiennes. The author, in his recovery from a grave illness, decides to join the spring migration path of Snow Geese from Texas to the northern territories of Canada. He alternates stories from his journey with scientific tidbits about the mysteries of migration. What I especially like is that without drawing attention to it, he juxtaposes the migration of the geese with the stories of the people he meets on buses who, like him and the geese, are also traveling north.

The stories and explanations for why people travel are varied, but in the end you wonder if we are not subject to the same restlessness, the same body-awareness of sun angles and magnetic fields, as the other creatures who share the planet with us. Maybe like different birds and insects, some of us are hard-wired for travel…