Feature

Editor's Letter: The great American vacation

The great American vacation is slipping away. It is increasingly reduced to a couple of days tacked on to a long weekend.

The great American vacation is slipping away. The number of Americans taking off from work for less than a full week at a time has more than doubled since 1990. Fewer and fewer workers are willing to risk a full two weeks away from the job, fearing perhaps that they’ll return to find their sales trophy in a box and a stranger in their cubicle. Instead, vacations are reduced to a couple of days tacked on to a long weekend, like a housekeeping addendum to an inter-office memo. Worse, the more senior the employee, the more likely she spends some part of that mini-vacation in the death grip of a digital-communications device.

This is no good. Foreign or exotic travel rarely accommodates a long weekend. And while it’s nice to stay on at a resort after the conference has packed up, hybrid travel in which high-octane stress gives way to solar-powered decompression doesn’t leave the traveler transformed, as a true vacation should. In their effect, or lack of it, short vacations stink. A real vacation is a genuine departure even if it’s a disaster. (“The worst trips make the best reading,” said Paul Theroux.) When I was young, my parents squeezed kids and collie into a sedan and drove 14 hours to the ocean. This was insane as well as miserable. We lived a couple hours’ drive from other vacation spots that, unlike our destination, had the added benefit of being affordable. But the sweaty, Freon-free drive, the sibling wrangles and roadside bathroom breaks, the bad air and worse food yielded to exultation upon reaching the promised land. Those beach vacations were hard-earned, hard-bought, and memorable. All two weeks of them.

Francis Wilkinson

Recommended

Can the world solve its 'imminent' water crisis?
The growing water crisis
Today's big question

Can the world solve its 'imminent' water crisis?

The end of the line for Boris Johnson?
Boris Johnson
Talking point

The end of the line for Boris Johnson?

U.S. strikes Iranian targets in Syria after drone attack kills U.S. contractor
U.S. forces in Hasaka, Syria
Flare Up

U.S. strikes Iranian targets in Syria after drone attack kills U.S. contractor

Why are U.S. troops still in Somalia?
An illustrated collage of U.S. troops, Somalia's outline, and palm trees
In depth

Why are U.S. troops still in Somalia?

Most Popular

DeSantis' no good, very bad week
Ron DeSantis at a podium
Behind the scenes

DeSantis' no good, very bad week

Essential molecules for life may have been 'delivered' to Earth from space
Asteroid Ryugu.
alien invasion

Essential molecules for life may have been 'delivered' to Earth from space

Mosquito species from South America discovered in Florida
Culex lactator.
new in town

Mosquito species from South America discovered in Florida