Our biggest concerns were whether our motorcycle would break
down and our money would last. We had no idea that we'd end up struggling to
save our life as a couple.
The physical and emotional challenges were immense, but we traveled so
well. We became closer than ever.
Every day was unique, but if we were out there for long
enough we got into an incredible groove. It was almost as if we became one in
the world. For a while, we did it very well. It was all we needed in life.
All long journeys have highs and lows. You just
have to wait them out, like a storm. Right? That's what we thought. We kept
going, over the next mountain, into the next country....
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An Interview with Allen Noren
Allen Noren is a veteran of
seven extended journeys and many shorter ones.
He has traveled by foot, single-engine airplane, bicycle, train, car, and
kayak, through more than forty countries.
Storm: A Motorcycle Journey of Love,
Endurance, and Transformation is a harrowing, poignant, and often
humorous tale of a summer spent traveling around the Baltic
Sea by motorcycle. Little did Allen and Suzanne (his partner of seven years)
know that they were headed straight for the coldest, wettest, windiest summer
in recorded history. Travelers' Tales caught up with Allen to talk about
writing, traveling as a couple, and his commitment to life on the road.
- Travelers' Tales:
- Storm is a unique travel story not only because it focuses on how
a relationship is challenged by a journey, but also because it reveals two
people who are sincerely trying to maintain their connection. You have
managed to reveal yourself and your partner without giving in to the easy
temptation of simplification. There are no easy answers in Storm, there
is no resolution.
- Noren:
- Thank you for that. No, there are no easy answers. Resolution is a
chimera we have to wrestle with on our own. What intrigues me is how different
people read Storm. It causes strong reactions and stays with them.
Everyone I talk to says it makes them reflect on their own relationships
whether they have traveled together or not. I think that to live is to travel.
You don't have to go around the Baltic Sea to experience the same things
Suzanne and I did. One woman who read Storm is buying copies for her
couples-therapy group. She said the book uncovers issues that all couples
will experience at some point and provides a way to talk about them.
- Travelers' Tales:
- In Storm, you reflect on the purpose of travel:
"You realize that ordinariness can be stumbled upon anywhere, and that even
the places we dream of going, the places where we imagine our lives will
change irrevocably, can be just as plain as the place we left."
That realization suggests that one's internal landscape presides over an
external one. Have you, in your own travels, found a way to use the external
landscape to achieve internal change? Have you undergone changes that you
have not sought or wanted, due to your travels?
- Noren:
- Yes, it's not as if we can shed our skin and become someone else just
because we go to a new place. We pack our same old selves around with us.
However, change will come. It's inevitable. Remember that saying, "Expect it
when you least expect it"? Change happens whether we travel or not, and it
usually comes unexpectedly. Two of my favorite writers, Anton Chekhov and
Raymond Carver, illustrate this time and time again in their stories. Small,
seemingly insignificant events--a peek inside a neighbor's apartment, the
sale of a used car, a chance encounter at the seashore--are life-changing.
I think change is more apt to happen while traveling, though, simply because
you're exposed to so many different environments and people. Much of
Storm is about unexpected change. Suzanne and I thought we had set off
on another in a series of great adventures. We were seasoned and
knowledgeable. Our biggest concerns were whether our motorcycle would break
down and our money would last. We had no idea that we'd end up struggling to
save our life as a couple.
If you're thinking of traveling as a couple, be sure to read Allen's
Ten Travel Tips for Couples.
- Travelers' Tales:
- Storm details a rather difficult trip. For Suzanne, the difficulty seemed
both physical and emotional, whereas for you the physical challenges weren't
as upsetting. Tell us about your best trip with Suzanne.
- Noren:
- In light of your question, the trip that comes to mind is one to South
Africa. We traveled there six months after Mandela was released from prison.
It was a tumultuous, edgy time; nobody knew from one day to the next whether
there would be a bloody revolution or an outbreak of peace. Suzanne was very
reluctant to go. She almost didn't. We arrived in Johannesburg in the late
fall. There was snow in the high veldt. At that time there were only a few
hotels in the country and they were too expensive for us. There were no youth
hostels, and very little camping. Our first two nights in Johannesburg were
spent in a spare room of a run-down convalescent hospital in the Hillbrow
district, a section of the city with a high crime rate. The hospital was
filled with poor whites. The black staff were even older and more infirm than
the patients. At mealtimes the whites took pleasure in barking orders and
hurling insults at the staff. One old woman would push her silverware onto
the floor and scream until one of the blacks picked it up and cleaned it off
for her.
We got our bearings and rented a wreck of a car from a junkyard. We had to
push start it each morning, which was difficult in the winter cold. We drove
that car up and down the country for three weeks. In Storm there is a
portrait of Suzanne from this trip. One morning we got on the road before the
sun came up. Out of some bushes on the side of the road appeared a black man,
and Suzanne insisted that we stop and give him a ride. The portrait is about
what happened on that ride.
I mention all these difficult details because our trip to South Africa was
probably our best, and we were at our best. The physical and emotional
challenges were immense, but we traveled so well. We became closer than ever.
Suzanne and I became engaged with the people and the events unfolding around
us. Suzanne came alive on that trip. I'd never seen her so passionate about a
place, the people, and all that we became entangled in, no matter how
difficult.
- Travelers' Tales:
- Before traveling with Suzanne, you had traveled extensively alone but
never with a companion or romantic partner. Based on your own experiences,
can you make any generalizations about how those experiences tend to be
different? Or do you find that each experience is singular, unique,
unpredictable--whether you're on your own or with a partner?
- Noren:
- People I grew up with didn't travel, and then when I set out on my first
trips, to communist Eastern Europe, nobody would go with me anyway. So I
learned to travel solo. I loved traveling alone. I could go where and when I
liked. I always met interesting people who invited me into their lives. I
began traveling with Suzanne tentatively. One of the first things I noticed
was that it was much more difficult to meet people. A couple is a whole unit.
I quickly discovered the benefits of traveling with someone you love, though.
Most importantly, you get to share the world with them. Who needs anyone else
when you're in love anyway? You are a world. And there are all kinds of
practical benefits of traveling as a couple, such as ordering two dishes and
sharing them, having someone to watch your bags while you check a timetable,
and not getting lonely.
Every trip was unique. Every day was unique, but if we were out there for long
enough we got into an incredible groove. It was almost as if we became one in
the world. For a while, we did it very well. It was all we needed in life.
- Travelers' Tales:
- You've managed to portray Suzanne's thoughts and feelings with compassion
and empathy, even when they're at odds with your own. The fact that you're
able to do that is what makes Storm such a compelling and interesting
book. Its characters are charged with honorable effort yet they maintain the
flaws that make them human, rather than literary symbols. As a writer, you
present the conflicts that occur between the two of you on their own terms, as
much as possible, making an effort not to take sides. You're able to occupy
two points-of-view, simultaneously--that of the first person speaker (the "I")
and that of the omniscient narrator, who knows and empathizes with the
thoughts, feelings, and motivations of everyone involved. Though it seems
"natural," it is part of your craft. Can you describe the process by which
you achieve that effect?
- Noren:
- There were two points of view. Because I loved and respected Suzanne, I
understood her concerns and fears. But I couldn't agree with her. I couldn't
agree because her concerns and fears were not my own. I was having a very
different kind of trip. I thought that things would get better if we just kept
going. They always had before. After all, when we were in the thick of it,
nobody thought the wind and rain could last for more than a few days. Time
after time people said it would stop, that just over the next mountain it
would be different. Besides, all long journeys have highs and lows. You just
have to wait them out, like a storm. Right? That's what we thought. We kept
going, over the next mountain, into the next country....
- Travelers' Tales:
- Was it difficult to achieve that balance of tone in your writing? Did
you find it more difficult to tell her version of the story, or your own?
- Noren:
- All good writing requires work. I went through many drafts to get
Storm to where it is. What was most difficult was to weave the
narrative together in an interesting way.
- Travelers' Tales:
- Did you, at any point in your portrayal of yourself, feel like a "bad
guy"? How did you, as a writer, negotiate those issues?
- Noren:
- Sure, and, depending on the day and my mood, I still do. As to writing
about the issues I write about, it was bird by bird, as the writer Anne
Lamott says.
- Travelers' Tales:
- You saw evidence of Westernization happening in Russia very soon after
the official end of the Iron Curtain. Do you have a sense that the world will
soon be unicultural, that Western influence will be so pervasive that the
world will lose its regional identity? Some people are concerned that travel
facilitates that process of homogenization, especially since it is so often
an extension of privilege and even an analogue of imperialism? Is there some
way that travel might protect or preserve regional identity?
- Noren:
- I learned a long time ago to resist the temptation to predict the outcome
of events, especially big events like the effects of travel and tourism.
However, it's clear that travel and tourism facilitate the exchange of both
good and bad ideas. Music, stories, mythology, and religion were all carried
on the backs of travelers throughout the world. Those were natural crossovers
and, given time, every culture will make them their own. However, there is
also an ugly side to this. For example, in Russia, the Baltic States, and
throughout Eastern Europe, there is a form of gangster capitalism that's both
ugly and brutal. It functions in its crassest form. Given time, that too will
become regularized. I think the most dangerous threat to cultures, however,
and the one that causes the most radical and damaging changes, including to
our own, is the spread of big corporations. Like a ravenous elephant they
trample everything in their paths to sate their hunger for profits. Nothing
else matters. Travel and tourism are benign in comparison.
- Travelers' Tales:
- You end Storm with a profoundly intriguing scene. What did you mean
by it?
- Noren:
- I don't want to give the ending away, but it seems to work on a number
of levels. What intrigues me is how people read the ending as if they
themselves have stepped into the story and become me. As I'm sitting there
beside the railroad tracks readers make up their own minds about what they
would have done.
Read excerpts from Storm
to learn more about Allen's trip around the Baltic Sea.
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