Confronting Hodophobia — The Fear of Travel

Fear of ship travel can be one aspect of hodophobia. Photo by Clark Norton

When my family and I lived on City Island, New York, a little island in the Bronx that’s the farthest northeast point in New York City,  our next door neighbor  — a born and bred City Island resident then in her 60s or 70s — made a startling confession: she had only once in her life ventured into Manhattan, and that was to visit a friend in the hospital there.

If you walked a short distance down the street from the little complex of cottages where we lived, you could enjoy a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline. I was shocked to learn that that alone had not lured her into New York’s best-known borough — much less the cultural opportunities, the restaurants, and all the sights that people traveled to Manhattan from around… Continue reading →