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Good Tourist, Bad Tourist

Isn't it odd how the word, tourist, is almost universally applied as a pejorative, a slur? This is true even though most people look forward to vacations and holidays, during which they typically are tourists. In America it is even said that many people vacation as long as fourteen days, almost every year.

The T word is used most negatively by those whose livelihoods depend most on tourism. The local yokels of a popular tourist area leave their own area, full of scenic wonders which they have become bored with, and vacation in other tourist areas that might be inferior to their home turf.

Here in the upper Arkansas River valley I am, for the first time in my life, seeing tourism as a positive thing. Perhaps the key distinction is mass tourism versus outdoorsy, specialized  tourism. Consider for a  moment the mass tourist -- that motor-bound chowhound who tries to enjoy the wonders of nature by staring through his vehicle's window glass. Say what they will, tourists like this must experience disappointment when scenery goes from "breath-taking" to banal in three minutes.

Scenery operates through the eye on our central nervous system and brain the same way that odors do, through the nose: they knock you off your feet for a few seconds, and then you become jaded and bored. Then you go to a restaurant for stimulation or back to the motel to watch TV.

Mass tourists want to have a good time, but are usually pretty unsuccessful. They don't even look happy. The outdoorsy tourist, who is actually moving his own body, does look happy. Recently we saw a father experiencing what could be called rapture.

 




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