When Rome fell, vacations and the tourist trade went into a slump that lasted in Western Europe for a thousand years. The medieval traveler making his way from one feudal barony to another navigated in hostile passages, always uncertain of refuge, as if a gargoyle Karl Maiden flapped after him, haunting him with visions of disaster. Some people setting off on vacation this season must believe that they have now arrived at a 20th century equivalent: a late Sunday afternoon on the American open road, the long procession of gas stations relentlessly shut down and the gauge's needle sinking like the setting sun toward Empty. If at last a gas line appears, winding up the road a quarter of a mile to an oasis of heraldic light, the effect is surreal: the machines in their idling file give off an almost animal heat, the drivers waiting inside them feeling anxious, vaguely betrayed (by Detroit, Carter, Schlesinger, OPEC, history) and sometimes alarmingly close to the Hobbesian state of nature.
Gas shortages across the U.S. have hardly initiated the new Middle Ages. But a skittish uncertainty about fuel, along with other factors like the stand-down of the DC-10 fleet and the way that dollars shrivel like cheap bacon when they go abroad, has begun to work changes in the way that Americans are approaching their annual ceremonies of leisure. Many vacations this year are being curtailed, especially the traditional summer trips that Americans en masse have taken since the early '50s—the long cross-country excursion by car. Now, having glimpsed the mortality of the machine, many Americans are planning trips no more than a tankful of gas away from their homes.
Travelers are still waiting to see if the inconvenience of the gas lines is going to disappear or grow worse. In the meantime, some are beginning to wonder a little whether the whole idea of the vacation—an institution sacrosanct in American habit—makes much sense.
The precise point of vacations is elusive—theoretically, anyway. Arnold Toynbee called the creative use of leisure "the mainspring of civilization." That sort of high-mindedness would surely ruin any holiday. In any case, vacations tend to divide into the active and the settled. Some wish to be invigorated, even chafed; they run down Deliverance rivers in canoes or else try to explore exotic civilizations (if they can pay the fare). The vacation-as-quest can have wonderful epiphanies. In 1939 the novelist Lawrence Durrell wrote to friends from Greece (for him an ancient world newly found): "The country is so still and wild; valleys unbelievably remote and pure . . . if ever there were valleys and enchanted places where the charm still holds good, it is here."
The difference between the active and the settled vacation is that the first often contains some stimulation of danger (however small or large) and the second is designed precisely to soothe, to eliminate threat. It is possible that those who do a certain amount of professional gang fighting tend to favor the settled vacation, while more regimented workers may prefer the adventurous vacation. But temperament is probably a more decisive factor. The most obvious purpose of vacations is contrast, interlude, a break in the pace.