We all have a family history — but how much do we really know about it? What’s still out there to uncover? And how does that history shape who we are today?
These are questions UTC Creative Writing and English professor Karen Babine set out to answer when she packed up a camper with her two cats and hit the road. Her cross-country journey took her from Minnesota to Nova Scotia, tracing the footsteps of her French-Acadian ancestors who settled there centuries ago.
The trip inspired her latest book, The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo. Babine will wrap up her book tour at The Book & Cover tomorrow, Oct. 17, 7-9 p.m., and you can grab tickets to be part of the conversation.
We talked with Babine ahead of the event about what it means to find your place in the world. Note: Her responses were edited for brevity.
What sparked your decision to take this solo journey?
As a non-fiction writer, I’m very interested in history. I’m very interested in family history. I’m very interested in stories. Because stories, I think, really are the foundation of humanity. We tell stories for entertainment. We tell stories to avoid danger. We tell stories for a whole lot of reasons. The catalyst for the trip was that my grandma died, and she had left us a little bit of money, and I decided to use it to take the biggest Scamp trip I’d taken up to that point. I had never been to the Maritimes. I’d never been anywhere out that direction. So that’s why I decided to point the camper in that direction.
Were there any discoveries that shifted your perspective along the way?
On the family side, a lot of the stuff I knew before I left. I had names and dates and trees going back to the 1620s which is when the Acadians first got to Nova Scotia. So I wasn’t going necessarily in search of data. What I didn’t know was what it would feel like to stand in those places. Because Nova Scotia, as a geographical place, is really interesting. The Bay of Fundy tides are so strong they move the peninsula twice a day. So it’s a very unstable place. I didn’t expect that the Bay of Fundy would have as much of an impact as it did. I have this idea that there are places on the planet that feel more like us, like they match our brains in a particular way. I did not expect the Bay of Fundy to be one of those. I would like to go back and just sit next to that water for a while.
How did traveling alone change the way you thought about independence?
You learn how to fix things. You learn how to be self-sufficient. And I’m always going to argue for self sufficiency. I think there was a thread in the book that I have to do things on my own, because if I don’t, they don’t get done.
Chattanooga is full of transplants. What would you say to someone trying to find a sense of belonging?
Find out about the place where you are — and what I mean by that is that we are who we are based on where we are, and we live differently when we know how a place behaves. So I grew up in northern Minnesota in a place that had very sandy soil. It was great for potatoes. It was great for strawberries. It eroded like nobody’s business, like we still have my grandparents place, and there’s a hill that goes down to the lake, and we were not allowed to go down that hill as kids, because grandpa was always trying to manage erosion. It still feels a little bit weird as an adult to go down that hill without grandpa’s voice in my head. So knowing the history of the place — and the stories it has to tell — is important. I think one of the most important things that I learned is that the weather [in Chattanooga] largely comes from the south. I’m used to places where the weather comes from the west. Learning that Tennessee’s got the highest rate of nocturnal tornadoes is good to know, but does not thrill me. Wherever you are, whichever place you are, has a story that predates you and will influence how the people are living in it, which you are now part of.
What advice would you give other women who are considering a solo trip?
A lot of women wait for some kind of permission to travel solo, like we’re waiting for somebody to go with us, or we’re waiting for some perfect time — and if I had any advice for women wanting to travel solo is to just do it. You don’t need anybody’s permission other than your own. You are smart, you are capable, and you’re in charge of your own life.
What does “home” mean to you now?
Home is the place that makes you feel the most you. That could be geography, that could be people, that could be a particular house. I think it can mean a lot of different things, but what it is at its heart is grounding in a way that we can’t get elsewhere.
