July is a time to get away from it all—exploring America’s rivers, coastlines and national parks or just holing up at a cabin on the shore of a nearby lake. Any one of those sounds wonderful. But in a recent podcast on “The Journal,” travel guru Rick Steves proposes a different idea. Instead of heading for the USA hills, get out of the country.
A Seattle native, he took his first trip to Europe in 1969 at age 19 and has been traveling ever since, parlaying his curiosity about the world into a highly successful travel business. Now with the perspective of one older, he advocates seeing different places, peoples and cultures not only for fun but because travel, he feels, is the best way to fight xenophobia. “If everyone travelled before they could vote, this world be a more stable, just and beautiful place.”
He acknowledges the surge in travel from the U.S. to abroad, but “the one half of the population that is not travelling are the ones that need to travel,” Steves says, adding, “We learn more about home by looking at it from a distance.” Steves, 70, is all about bridges. He urges us, through travel, to build bridges to the other 96% of humanity outside of our country. As far as he’s concerned “it’s folly” to think the world is made safer by building walls, literal or figurative. “They only plant seeds of instability,” he maintains, referencing walls that, over the course of history, have only made matters worse…Berlin, Belfast, the Holy Land and now, “the huge metaphorical wall dividing our country.”
The nationwide celebration of July Fourth is the month’s crowning jewel. It’s generally recognized for commemorating the start of something big for the USA. Most of us aware that in signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776 the 13 American Colonies proclaimed their sovereignty from British colonial rule. Most of us are vaguely familiar with how the Declaration begins: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Recently, this historical document has enjoyed more attention, has inspired more than just Fourth of July fireworks and fanfare. On June 14, 2025, the nationwide “No Kings Day” attracted five million Americans in 2,100 cities. Those participating rallied around a key section of the Declaration of Independence: “The history of the present King … is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” A recent follow-up and equally robust protest against tyrannical rule was held on July 17. “Good Trouble Lives On” derived its name from a phrase coined by the late US Representative and freedom fighter, John Lewis. He exhorted citizens to “Get in good trouble…” when participating in nonviolent protest to protect the rights of American citizens, to undo the damage done by racism, by “othering,” by building walls of fear and suspicion between one another.
Kareem Abdul Jabar agrees. In his book, “We All Want to Change the World,” the NBA champ, and champion for good, maintains that protests are a vital part of making change. Says Jabbar, “…there is a reason protest gatherings have been so frequent throughout history: They are effective. The United States exists because of them.” He adds, “Protests are life blood, mean a nation knows itself, wants to correct course.” Today, a growing number of citizens are protesting policies that erode democratic norms and civil liberties and put the freedoms we enjoy as Americans at risk.
Every Fourth in Bend, boisterous young revelers, their faces painted with the stars and stripes, streamers flying from their handlebars, bicycle through town waving American flags and shouting, “Freedom!” I often wonder what that word means to them, to any of us? Rick Steves is right. A good way to find out is to travel to other countries, to experience other cultures, to build bridges. In my travels as Oregon’s poet laureate, I meet poets young and old in readings and workshops. Here is an excerpt from a fine poem by a Hispanic high school student titled, “If It Wasn’t for Immigrants.”
And I wonder, truly, with all my heart,
how would they feel, those tearing us apart,
if they sat with the people
they seek to blame,
and realized, deep down, we’re really the same?
Isn’t that our work, every Fourth of July, every single minute, day, month and year—to sit “with the people we seek to blame and realize, deep down, we’re all the same.”
—Poet and author Ellen Waterston is a woman of a certain age who resides in Bend. “The Third Act” is a series of columns on ageing and ageism.
This article appears in Source Weekly July 24, 2025.
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