IN case you’ve been packing the wood-paneled station wagon, the sheiks have spoken and here’s what they’ve said: the American road trip is dead. I say, good riddance.

After all, who claimed the road trip had to be a great American rite of passage? Who claimed that the monotony of traveling thousands of miles at 80 miles per hour, hopped up on Big Macs and Cinnabons, led to enlightenment? Who said that breaking down in Big Bone, Ky., with a car of screaming kids, or being attacked by locusts in Hays, Kan., must be remembered as “an adventure”? And who claimed there was some poetic validity, some important American literary tradition based on guzzling gallon after gallon of unleaded petroleum with no care in the world for the environment?

You want a road trip? Try Google Earth.

In the meantime, let me share a secret. Our summer travel got downgraded from a road trip through Spain to a 15-minute ferry ride to the coastal Maine island of Chebeague, where I’m writing this. My family and I haven’t been in a car all week. We’ve gone clamming and beachcombing; we’ve read books and played board games.

At night, the waves begin their gentle crashing, and the ocean becomes its own hypnotic country. I can’t help but think of Emily Dickinson never leaving her house, how she saw multiplicity and wonder in a cobweb. Maybe I’ve discovered my own wonderland here.