Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 19

The Trouble with Tourists

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the canyon itself. Nonetheless, the differences between the two versions of “deeper
involvement” are in degree, not essence. We need also to recognize that another
factor influences how we seek “deeper involvement”-the desire for comfort. Wide
spread tourism, after all, derives from a social structure that promotes leisure as a
goal. Tourists balance the desire for experience with the desire for comfort, and
this has always been the case, even well before the tourist explosion of the mid
nineteenth century. If these two impulses are not diametrically opposed, they are
at least very often in practical conflict. As beautiful as much of the Grand Canyon
landscape is, it is, after all, a desert. It is hot. It is dry. And the gift shops have air
conditioning and ice cream. The tourist at the Grand Canyon who has little inter
est in moving beyond the ready-made, programmed sights from the rim prefers to
remain always near comfort that closely resembles his or her home. The tourist
who chooses to hike deeply into the canyon itself prefers to forego his or her
normal comforts, momentarily, and escape the comforts of home. This example
forces a question: which tourist to the Grand Canyon gains an authentic experi
ence?
Henry David Thoreau can help us with this query. According to Walden
(1854), one of the most provocative and challenging travel books ever writteneven though he traveled only a couple of miles-Thoreau went to the woods to
“live deliberately” and thus avoid coming to the end of his life only to realize, too
late, that he “had not lived,” and by implication that he had remained too passive,
too comfortable. By expressing his desire “to suck out all the marrow of life” (9091), Thoreau perfectly encapsulates the ideal of the romantic traveler (which, as
discussed above, can only be an ideal). Regardless of how short the physical
journey, it would be work, and it would be hard. It would also be original. Still, it
is important to remember that he had plenty of help and visitors, being only a few
miles from Concord. In any case, is such an experience truly still available? We
may appreciate Thoreau’s rather local traveling and his two-year-two-month ex
periment on Walden Pond, but few modem readers would opt for his brand of
travel, even if they embraced h is desire “to live deliberately.” Moreover, there are
few ponds like his Walden around, and few of us, for that matter, are friends with
someone, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who owns lakefront property. Still, we craveto some degree-to match at least Thoreau’s basic desire, and this craving mani
fests itself most often as a search for the authentic. Herein is the key to the ulti
mate and inescapable failure of tourism: no matter how often it promises the au
thentic, it can never deliver authenticity, and, moreover, it never did, even when
tourists called themselves travelers, even when the trees grew thick and undis
turbed on Walden Pond.
Walker Percy, in “The Loss of the Creature,” offers an interesting ap
praisal of the tourist’s dilemma. In referring to the Grand Canyon, he questions