The Loss of the Creature

Peoples’ expectations of their ideal vacation place are fabricated in the mind and a specific picture of beauty and enthralled excitement fill the empty spaces of the perplexed mind to satisfy our desirable thoughts of travel. Prior to arrival to the Vacationland, there is a set image in the mind that keeps our desire to travel growing upon arrival. Once we have arrived, a feeling of slight disappointment percolates through the mind if the imagery we have conjured in our mind does not meet expectations to what is presented before us in reality.
Preconceived notions of a place and the cultures within them are what cause this tarnished view of the personal vacationland. The people surrounding the place and the social exchange make it difficult to see the vacationland in its entirety. In Walker Percy’s article, “The Loss of the Creature”, he goes about explaining the vacationland and how the full assimilation can only be “approached by the stratagems we have mentioned: the Inside Track, the Familiar Revisited, the Accidental Encounter”. Percy believes that in order to obtain this full sense of a place, one must encounter the vacationland through the eyes of one of the three approaches mentioned without the social and preconceived interference.
When I am traveling I do in fact imagine the place in my mind to the fullest extent. For example, when I go camping in a new location I imagine everything in detail. From what the lake will look like as the warm sun shines on the undulated murky water, to the granite mountains surrounding the lake announcing their decorum of beauty of the entirety of the place. Upon arrival I think of how my campsite will appear to me as well as how I would like it to be. As I drive through whatever environment I am venturing into I feel like a voyager who is merely out on a quest in search of relaxation. Once I arrive to the campsite, to my dismay it is not how I appeared it to be. However being and optimist and one who is open to newfangled ideas, I accept this newly found vacationland and rather than suffering from a slight case of neurosis from the entangled vision I once had of this place I on my quest in search of relaxing satisfaction.