Category: Nomadism

  • Traveling Light: “Only What I Can Carry” Photo Project

    Traveling Light: “Only What I Can Carry” Photo Project

    Saturday, October 3rd, 2015. Helsinki, Finland.

    [This is only an excerpt from a longer piece about this project written for elephant journal. For the full story please click here.]

    The afternoon sun is kissing the tops of the pines surrounding my friend’s house, and I am packing.

    I’ve had an idea in my head for months now, and seeing as I’m in no hurry for once, this seems like the perfect opportunity to realize it.

    I’ve been living out of my purple, 60-liter Osprey backpack for just under a year now. This is the second time I’ve done so, and I can pack in 10 minutes—15 tops—when needed.

    Today, though, I take my time to fold my clothing into neat piles and gather every last small belonging into a compact square in the center of the floor.

    I’m not exactly sure why, but taking stock seems important…

    The more I travel and the longer I wander, the better I understand how much I need, and how much I am able to carry. (And still, always, it is too much.)

    More and more, too, I recognize the difference between need and desire—the meaning of priorities. I don’t need even half of what I choose to carry with me. I do in fact need my laptop for work, and maybe a few changes of clothing and some warm layers.

    But my practice poi? Small bag of jewelry? Pretty shirts, oversized headphones and red lipstick? Indulgences and whimsy—and I know it…

    What I keep—I recognize I keep out of attachment, not out of necessity…

    This is only what I can carry.

    Some of it I need; some of it I want, but if it’s too much weight or doesn’t all fit, something has to go.

    This isn’t for everyone; hell, it may not always be for me. Nevertheless, this is a viable way to live, and—I believe—a powerful exercise in living simply.

    I hope these images might inspire you to try the same—even if it’s only for a walk around the block! 😀

    [This is only an excerpt from a longer piece about this project written for elephant journal. For the full story please click here.]

  • Reflections on a Birthday: Wandering, Searching, & Answering the Call

    Yesterday, I turned 24.

    The past year has been anything but boring as vagabonded my way from Europe to Africa to the U.S. and back, teaching yoga, doing marketing, starting work at elephant journal and publishing over 100 pieces of writing along the way.

    Some of it I’ve written about here; much of it I haven’t. I’m committed to keeping this a travel blog only, and so today, that’s what I’d like to focus my birthday reflections on: this journey.

    A little over a year ago, I decided to go on a vision quest—four hungry days and nights alone in the Vermont wilderness.

    I was looking for something… I didn’t find it.

    I found nothing, in fact, save for a few lovely dragonflies, ducks, and one very long, very cold night stranded beneath the stars.

    Traveling—maybe—is a little bit like that.

    First, we answer the call. Second, we set out into the unknown. And third… third maybe we bring back nothing from our journey. What then?

    As I’ve written before, I’m not searching for [fill in the blank], and so it’s very unlikely that I’ll find “it” anytime soon. And sometimes I find myself stranded beneath those metaphorical stars—cold, hungry or lost… or all three!—and I wonder how the hell I ended up there. What crazy, impulsive, excellent decision got me there?

    But it’s always the right place.

    The stars never wonder why I’m there; they know, and at least that’s one of us.

    You see, I have a philosophy I love about journeys, choices and life, and it basically goes like this:

    Each of our lives is like a forest, or a valley, a mountain a desert, etc—it doesn’t matter—absolutely covered in paths.

    When we look around, we see all of those paths—infinite options, possibilities—choices to be made.

    But when we look behind us, we see only one path—our footsteps in the sand, tracks through the woods, etc—our path.

    That path—our path—is the only path we could have walked, because it is the one we have walked. And each choice we make—once it is made—is the only choice we could have made, because there it is behind us—another footprint, another step on our path—past.

    We answer the call; we make our choices. 


    I find this outlook deceptively simple, quite practical and deeply compelling. Maybe you will too.
    When I look at the year behind me, I see each step that has brought me to this place (a cozy couch in London, England at this particular moment). I regard that winding journey without regret and with no small measure of appreciation, for without it I would not be here—the only place I could possibly be.

    When I look at the year ahead, well, I do so with butterflies in my stomach and wings on my heels, because the forest is so vast—the paths so numerous—that I can take in but a fraction of it at a time.

    And that is every life—not only mine. Every year, every birthday, every moment and every step.

    I believe that, and the stars agree.

    Thank you for being a part of this journey—as a reader, a friend, a star, or all three!

    ***

  • I Want to Do All of the Things

    This is not a bucket list.

    I wrote this list a few weeks ago as the realization dawned on me that, without exaggeration, I want to do “all of the things.”

    There is not a country I wouldn’t want to visit, a language I wouldn’t like to study, an art or dance I wouldn’t want to learn or a food I wouldn’t want to try.

    Whenever someone shares a story of adventure, I listen carefully—not only out of friendly curiosity, but also out of a vested self-interest—making mental notes for the day I can follow their trail, or blaze my own.

    In the invigorating—and overwhelming—rush of ideas that tends to accompany an “I want to do all the things” epiphany (it’s not my first) I decided to try something new.

    I decided to write it all down.

    This list is a work in progress. I have surely forgotten things, and will doubtless add other ideas I haven’t even thought of yet. The list of places on the left is woefully incomplete, and I know I’m missing something major… no matter.

    One thing is certain, however: This is not a bucket list.

    These are not things I’m hoping to do some day in the future, before I “kick the bucket”; rather, these are (all) things I want do do now. Tomorrow. Next month. As soon as possible… It might take a decade or five, but I’m starting yesterday.

    My list includes the following items:

    • Travel the TransSiberian (or TransMongolian) Railway
    • Go to Argentina to study Tango—and Spanish
    • Go to Brazil to study Capoeira—and Portuguese
    • Travel across a country by horseback
    • Join the circus (learn a circus skill first)
    • Travel through Poland and Eastern Europe with my grandmother’s suitcase.
    • Chase the Northern Lights (I tried last week… no success)
    • Hike the Long Trail (VT)
    • Climb some tall mountains
    • Find a way to contribute—anywhere… everywhere.

    That’s just a few.

    Is it an extraordinary privilege to be able to look at every single item on this list as a real possibility? Absolutely yes. Am I still searching for the right way to be of service as I pursue these passions? Of course—although, since starting work at elephant journal I feel more assured of that side of things.

    Perhaps most importantly, why? Why do I want to do/try/learn/see all this?

    Why the tireless pursuit of adventure?

    A little secret: There is no why.

    There are secondary reasons—to learn, understand and grow are all real and valid motives. But they are secondary. The primary “reason why” is formless.

    Because.

    Adventure, travel, wandering, journeying for me have always been (and may always be) a raison d’être. A “why” unto themselves.

    That is, I do not wander because ______, or travel to _______; but rather, when in movement, when in the pursuit of adventure, I have no need of why’s.

    I do not wonder why I am here, what I should be doing or what my purpose is… I simply am.

    And so I want to do “All of the Things,” because so long as this list (and its much longer mental counterpart) are close to my heart, my wings beat of their own accord. Existence, then, is its own end—and that is every thing.

    So… what’s on your list?
    ***
    [I’ll be in London now through (almost) the end of October. Checking in after 2 weeks in Helsinki, Finland, which were so packed with adventure I haven’t had time to write about them yet! Much more to come on that very soon.]

  • What is this Feeling? …Nostalgia??

    Stunning views from my seat flying Catania, Sicily to Istanbul (on my way to Stockholm…
    I should not have opted to fly that way, and now I have no luggage… ah, well… collateral.)

    Lately, I’ve been experiencing a sentiment I’ve never known before.

    A strange tightening in my chest when it’s time to pack.

    An odd sensation as I watch the ground shrink below me during take-off.

    An unfamiliar twinge as I lift my hand to wave goodbye.

    I feel excited to be continuing on to the next place—of course, that goes without saying, and, I suspect, will never change.

    And yet… and yet…

    I think I would call it nostalgia, this new feeling.

    First it was Zanzibar, and now Sicily.

    Maybe I’m growing sentimental in my old age. (Just kidding—my old age is a long, long way away!) Maybe I’m allowing the places (or these people… or these lives, discretely wrapped packages of time, space and possibility) I briefly inhabit to reach a little bit deeper than I used to—sending out just the finest roots beneath my skin.

    Or maybe it’s an inevitable side-effect, which has simply run unrecognized along the sidelines up until now.

    Wherever it comes from, this nostalgia weaves a duskier hue at the edges of my leave-takings. A slight reluctance (never stronger than the bolder urge to continue on, but there nonetheless). A bittersweet recognition that I may in fact miss this place (these people… this time… this particular configuration of life)—that I was happy here.

    It’s the taste of the last sip of hot chocolate, and the color of the faded corner of a photograph. Savoring. It’s the feeling of lingering before standing up to leave a cafe… and it adds, I think, a lovely dimension to each journey onward—a depth, a balance to anticipation.

    While this feeling—this nostalgia—is unfamiliar to me, I welcome it. I acknowledge it (for it undoubtedly deserves its place in the scheme of things), and then I leave it beside the photographs, memories and written pages—where it belongs.

    So. Nolstalgia… welcome to the adventure!

    ***
    Greetings from Stockholm, Sweden, where I am visiting my oldest friend for the week. My luggage is dwelling in Istanbul at the moment, but I will be sharing some amazing shots from Sicily as soon as it finds it’s way over here!
    ***

  • Why Am I Here?

    2:00 a.m. Rome, Italy. Fiumicino Airport.

    I arrive haggard, disoriented and ready to drop after a red-eye from Detroit, a 12-hour layover in Amsterdam, and a much delayed flight to Rome.

    Naturally, my pack is last to appear at the baggage claim.

    Even so, I fall into a taxi (my only option at this hour) reluctantly—unaccustomed to paying so much for so little. I direct the driver to Trastevere—my favorite Roman neighborhood, where I will spend the next five days. My Italian, which received a surprising amount of use in Africa, rises quickly to my tongue.

    I sit back, desperately wishing, but unable, to sleep.

    As the damp night speeds past my window, I watch it in a daze. Thanks to some alchemical blend of exhaustion and disorientation, I feel none of my usual enthusiasm.

    And for what may be the first time in my entire life, I find myself wondering, “Why am I here?”

    The answer is simple to a fault. I chose to come to Italy (rather than return to Zanzibar) because 1. I love Italy, 2. I speak Italian, and 3. It was easy to get here from Amsterdam, where I had an un-cancelable flight to anyway.

    I have many times answered the question, “Why travel?” for my own benefit and others’. I have many times defended wandering as a path and destination unto itself. So why ask, why am I here? Why now, when finally I have a great job that I love and the first green shoots of a writing career to show for my efforts over the last year and a half?

    Perhaps it is the openness of it all—my life, that is. The lack of timeline, the total freedom of movement, the sheer vastness of being, which, when made reality, frankly baffles me.

    If you asked me right now why I am here, what I am going to do or where I am going—in the metaphysical, not the practical sense of the words—I would answer you honestly: I don’t know.

    Right now, though, a few crumbs remain scattered from my meal over the red and white checkered tablecloth. A nearly-empty glass of red wine sits before me, and across the lane, a mesmerizing wall of quivering paper butterflies. Beside that, a pile of selfie sticks.
    Tourists wander by in their summer dresses and Sophia Loren style hats, carrying cones of gelato or holding hands. The cobblestones are worn and smooth here, and high yellow walls rise up into the night. The streets are lined with tiramisu kisses, echoes of tambourine music, and spiralling jewelry I would like to buy. The air breathes slowly, wafting the scent of basil, garlic and bread through the scene.
    In this moment, then, I do not ask, “Why am I here?” 
    I am simply here.
    That–so simple and yet so profoundly complete–is the point. I am here. Tomorrow I will be here, and the day after that, and every day, hour, moment following.
    A hundred voices clatter against the wall–Italian, French, English, Spanish and others I can’t understand–and I am here, listening.
    The tang of red wine (della casa, of course) lingers on my tongue, and I am here, tasting.
    A yellow glow bathes the faces of visitors walking their dream across the butterfly wall, and I am here, watching. I am grateful to call this my reality.
    The particularities of the scene around me confront my senses–the man selling lighters shaped like toilet seats; the couple beside me who have returned to this same restaurant after visiting two years ago; the tap tap of gold heels on cobblestones; the clutter of languages in my ear; the fatigue of lingering jet-lag–and I am here, living in it.
    Why am I here?
    That I don’t know, but I am.
    ***

  • Time to Move

    Once upon a time, nomads—largely hunter gatherers or pastoralists—knew it was time to move when the game animals moved on, or the fields became depleted. They followed the tides of nature.
    Some traveled in caravans of camels or on horseback. They were self-sufficient. They carried their homes with them—bundled tents, cookware and provisions.
    I will be the first to admit I have nothing in common with those nomads.
    I travel by bus, train, or car. Boat if I’m lucky. I do not gather my food—though the markets in Mbita are hardly a walk in the park. If you dropped me in the middle of the desert, I would not have the requisite resources for survival…
    I carry no tent; no cookware; few provisions.
    But maybe I still share something with those wanderers of old who have always captured my imagination.
    I, too, follow a kind of tide.
    An initial wave of excitement carries me to a new place. The promise of a work exchange. The open door to a friend’s home. A spark catching in my belly and igniting my anticipation.
    That first surge crests, and the tide begins to ebb—weeks later, or maybe months. The work is monotonous. The place too isolated or too busy. The enthusiasm never dies, but it smolders more faintly.
    Then a new opportunity calls. This time on the coast, or in the mountains, or across the border. Another surge gathers momentum and I follow.
    I can usually feel when it is time to move.
    No matter how many times I follow this cycle, that initial burst of excitement never seems to lessen. The making of plans, the preparation to move, transition, journey, holds a special kind of magic for me.
    In three days, it will be time again. The ocean is calling. The sand, waves, salt and always, always the

    unknown beckon. From tides of intuition to tides of water.

    There is a backpackers on Diani Beach (30 km south of Mombasa) with room for volunteers. I still have 2 months left on my Kenyan visa, so I think I may stay there a month if it fits.
    Time to say goodbye to Rusinga Island and the rock paintings I may never find. Time to pack up and head east to meet the sun.
    Time to move.

    ~

  • A Vagabond’s Manifesto

    I believe in coincidence. Happenstance. Chance. It has been responsible for so many of my experiences—too real to ignore—creating connections where I expected none, and repeatedly linking past interactions to present ones. I recently picked up Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” and he believes in coincidences too. He writes, “Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.” I believe that meaning pools in the cracks between our expectations.
    Only this kind of meaning-full coincidence could explain how often the word “vagabond” crossed my path during my travels through Asia and Europe.
    I saw it painted across the front of buses in Nepal. Printed on a license plate in Thailand. Written on a Guest House sign in Cambodia. On graffiti. On T-shirts. Everywhere. I took its recurrence as an endorsement of my wandering activities by the world of signs.
    “Be Happy. Be Free. Vagabond,” became my motto for that year. I carved it into trees, painted it on walls, and tucked it into emails and postcards.
    In most every religious tradition, words themselves are understood to have power. That is why we are encouraged to repeat mantras or prayers even when we don’t understand them. I had long been drawn to words like “gypsy,” “wander,” “journey,” “nomad,” “wayfaring,” and, of course, “vagabond,” not only for their meanings and the images they conjured, but also for their taste in my mouth, rich and piquant. Their sensual, abstract power touched me deeply. I wrote essays on wanderlust, papers on nomads, and blog posts on wandering. These words cast a spell on me, saturating my dreams, and my waking life too.
    According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, a vagabond is, “a person who travels from place to place and doesn’t have a home or much money.” It can also refer to “leading an unsettled, irresponsible, or disreputable life.” Well, yes. The word “vagabond” often does, admittedly, hold negative connotations. Vagabonds are gypsies, tramps, and vagrants too. Our society often stigmatizes and demonizes these titles and the people who hold them. There is an implied element of disreputability, unsavoriness, or indolence.
    Such definitions have merit, too, and yet, I never lost my love—idealistic though it may be— for the vivid flavor of these words and what they describe. One word, “vagabond,” through chance or predestination, came to inspire my actions, beliefs and perspectives over the course of that year-long journey, and it continues to do so.
    For me, a vagabond is indeed one “who travels from place to place and [maybe] doesn’t have a home or much money,” but he or she is also one who is content with little, open to the world, and ever curious and optimistic. A vagabond defies society’s rules, certainly, but is by no means immoral; we need rule-breakers, (well-meaning) trouble-makers and chance-takers in the world. Vagabonds defy what is expected of them and read signs in the coffee grounds of coincidence. By this definition, I am proud to assign myself such a title.
    In sharing this accumulated list of a vagabond’s guiding principles, garnered from my experiences, I hope to highlight the beauty of this word and its impact on me and my travels. Maybe I will succeed in redefining it for you as I did for myself.
    A Vagabond’s Manifesto:
    • Always expect the absolute best of others, but have the resourcefulness and resiliency to recover when you encounter the worst.
    • Be fluid, open and expansive.
    • Carry little on your back, much in your mind.
    • Embrace spontaneity. Have contingency plans.
    • Never turn down free food.
    • Turn theory into action. Learn courage and fearlessness by doing things that are courageous and fearless.
    • Trust your instincts. Your intuition. Your belly.
    • Never say no to an adventure.
    • When unsure how to proceed, laugh.
    • Play often.
    • Walk everywhere. (Or bike. Or hitchhike. Or scooter. Or swim.)
    • Don’t believe anything everyone tells you. Believe everything anyone tells you.
    • Love and live like your train is leaving tomorrow.
    • Find joy in movement. Find joy in stillness.
    • Wander. Seek. Pursue. In body, mind and soul.
    • Be Happy. Be Free. Vagabond.

    ~

  • In Defense of Aimless Wandering

    In Defense of Aimless Wandering

    Somehow two months have managed to sneak by me since I last posted anything.

    In that time I have tried every tropical fruit available in Sri Lanka, spent a night with my family on a houseboat in Kerala, celebrated Christmas Eve with a very drunken Keralan Santa Claus, celebrated New Year’s Eve with my big brother in Varkala, completed an intensive yoga teacher training in Goa, learned about energy healing, overstayed my Indian visa, traveled 40 hours by train from Goa to Calcutta to get an exit visa, sat on the stoop of a man named Asheef and listened to his life story, eaten every kind of street food, sampled scorpions in Bangkok, learned how to make curry paste, biked 70 kilometers to a waterfall in Laos, kayaked from one city to the next, explored a massive cave, avoided abduction by tuk tuk, gotten sick, gotten better, rushed, relaxed, walked, danced and wandered.

    Whew! The longer I’ve put off catching up, the more daunting the task has become. Since I couldn’t hope to fill in all the gaps, I will call that caught and move on to a topic that has long occupied my thoughts, especially in the last couple weeks…

    Ah, aimless wandering! Some would denigrate you, belittle and besmirch your name, but I would like to come to your defense. Each day, I wake up with no set plan, no idea where I will be tomorrow, and no worries. Each day stretches out before me in an infinite rainbow array of possibility, so bright that the future beyond resembles Sri Lankan hill country, where thick gray fog conceals green valleys of unknown depth.

    In moments of doubt I worry that this traveler’s lifestyle I have chosen to adopt for a few months might be frivolous, or that others may judge it so. But then I remind myself: I spend each day from sunrise ‘til well after dark with my eyes, mind and heart wide open—how many people can truly say that? Each day is dedicated to the new, consecrated by the unknown and celebrated by the joy of movement.

    If life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans (thanks, Jack), then maybe, just maybe, it is only without direction that we can truly live.

    I suspect I may seem to be glorifying an ambitionless, idle existence, writing a slacker’s manifesto as it were. Not so. If plans are the sticky rice of life, then flexibility and spontaneity are the hot red curry that makes that rice not only edible, but beautiful.  I would make the distinction between life without destination and life without intention—the former can manifest in aimless wandering, while the latter results in meaningless grasping.

    It is when we wander with purpose that we become frustrated, lost in the twists and curves of an unfamiliar city, unable to arrive at our destination.  But when aimless, without direction, wandering realizes its full potential, and we find suddenly, on arriving, where we were heading all along.  The best swimming holes, cafes, temples, parks and people are not to be found, let alone enjoyed, in a hurry.

    To wander aimlessly takes courage, to defy society’s demands for plans and commitments; confidence, to stand by a pursuit that on the surface has minimal value; and perhaps a wisp of insanity and a shred of common sense, to know when to keep going, and when to stop, respectively.  In small doses it can cure most ills, and in large ones it is a lethal injection to normal life.  I defend it wholeheartedly but within reason.

    To you, aimless wandering, without whom every journey would be routine.

  • Why Travel

    Killing two birds with one stone: First essay of the semester, first blog post!

    Why? 

    More often than not, when I informed people this summer that I would soon be leaving for Nepal, they asked me why. Why Nepal? Why leave Vermont? Why?  After two years at Middlebury College, where travel, like exercise and flannel shirts, seems to be self-evident, I was taken aback.  Why not, of course.  To study to learn to adventure to explore to experience.  Is that not reason enough?  Nestled in the idyllic green mountains of Stowe, Vermont, where I lived and worked for the summer, I repeatedly encountered that most derisive of queries: why.  I felt that inherent in that single word, whether spoken in earnest, in confusion or in horror, lay another, insistent question.  Why travel?

    For the first time, I sought to defend a passion whose worth I had always believed to be obvious.  I travel because to read about the world is not enough.  To know, to truly understand those places practices people beyond our immediate acquaintance, we must engage with them.  As I see it, under the new demands of globalization we have an unprecedented responsibility to know the world that has been brought to our doorsteps.  The “other” (a long-time favorite of social scientists and a frequent guest in my own academic essays) now routinely faces us from television sets, newspapers and computer screens, but our awareness halts there.  The many “others” outside this insular, Western, American society approach closer and closer along with their worlds, and continued resistance to knowing them demonstrates a pigheaded denial.  Cross-cultural learning, and ultimately understanding and tolerance, is not a choice, but a necessity.  Travel, then, when feasible, is necessary as well.

    Following the Dalai Lama’s 1959 flight to India and statement that since the PLA’s arrival in Lhasa “the Tibetan government did not enjoy any measure of autonomy,” the New China News Agency criticized his “so-called statement,” responding that “Tibet’s political and religious systems were all laid down by the Central Government in Peking… In modern history the so-called Tibetan independence has always been a scheme of the British imperialists for carrying out aggression against China…”[1]  Such gross distortions of reality did and will proliferate under the influence of world powers like China.  Statements such as these have and will become truth, picked up by media and parroted to the world.  This new truth, once accepted by a group at large, becomes for all intents and purposes reality.  Hegemony, in a word.

    When I mentioned that unfortunately my itinerary would not include a stop in Tibet and someone responded, “Is that still around?” I witnessed the consequences of more than half a century of distortion and untruths.  When, working as a waitress, I told a table about my upcoming trip and one woman said, “Nepal? Isn’t it all backwards over there?” I didn’t bother responding, but these incidents are why I believe in travel.

    Do I travel, then, to combat hegemony and engender large-scale cross-cultural understanding? My goals are hardly so lofty.  I travel to know and experience the world at an individual level.  When I examine my motives, I find, underlying the basic urge to explore, the hope that in some small way I might approach this higher objective as well.  My drive, however, remains personal: to study to learn to adventure to explore to experience.  And yes,Why not?

    [1] Avedon, John F. “In Exile from the Land of the Snows.” Harper Perennial: 1997. P68
    **Many thanks to the beautiful, brilliant Emma Pask for listening to me when I first tried to articulate these thoughts, hopefully they’ve made some kind of progress since then.