Pulitzer Center Grantee Discovers Limited Travel is Surprisingly Liberating

In 2008, former Pulitzer Center Grantee Christie Aschwanden decided to reduce her carbon footprint by doing what seems impossible for 21^st-Century Americans: she made a 50-mile radius around her house and didn't leave it for an entire year.

Because her father was an American Airlines pilot, Aschwanden grew up flying anywhere and everywhere. Her career as a journalist also sent her to exotic locales to uncover difficult-to-reach stories. In 2007 she travelled on a grant from the Pulitzer Center to Vietnam to explore the effects of Agent Orange on the local community.

Yet according to her article in Mother Jones and her radio interview on KVNF, Aschwanden found—to her surprise—that she enjoyed the low levels of stress that come from a life free from air travel. She writes, "I no longer agonized about whether to take this trip or that—or had to hassle with the logistics."

Aschwanden now keeps in touch virtually, employing the help of programs like Skype to "visit" her friends and family. When even car trips aren't absolutely necessary, she finds a way around them or avoids them altogether. After a full year with almost no travel, Aschwanden concluded that "a lot of my essential travel simply wasn't."

Christie Aschwanden's one-year experiment in limited travel has now become a full lifestyle change—a change Aschwanden welcomes with open arms not only for its "green" benefits but its personal benefits as well.

Listen to Christie Aschwanden's radio interview with KVNF. For more information on the Pulitzer Center's reporting on climate change, visit our Heat of the Moment Gateway.