By most measures, I had it made. A lucrative and rewarding career with colleagues I thoroughly enjoyed and admired; a desirable work – life balance; a home-town/state many people would vacation to; and a solid foundation of friends and hobbies to occupy my free time.
But as mentioned in my About page, I also possess an exceptional thirst for an accentuated life. When the Siren calls, I pursue her. Fortunately, most often without succumbing to her dangers, rather reaping her rewards. The concept for this trip has been building for years, maybe decades.
Some time as a teenager I obtained a copy of Geographica – An Atlas of the World. As a near nightly ritual, I would read about obscure countries and distant cultures while charting the courses of watersheds and mountain ranges across the world. An insatiable interest and hunger to know more of the globe through first-hand experience would take root.
As a late teenager and twenty-something, I spent most of that decade living abroad in Europe or Latin America, as well as one glorious summer farming and backpacking in Alaska. While I benefited from profound and authentic experiences, I often did so with little economic certainty or padded compensation. I earned a $45k salary in my first year of professional work at 23, and after being laid-off in The Great Recession, subsequently earned perhaps $45k in total over the next six years between 24 and 29; albeit the backwaters of Central and South America do not require much plata para sobrevivir.
When I had time to travel beyond my base, it was accomplished on a shoe-string budget and a ‘vibe‘ that would make Jack Kerouac proud. In fact, On the Road, an early adolescent read of mine highlighting the spirit of the 1950s beat generation, proved a philosophical bedrock for me in trusting that a crazy idea and an appreciable charm were more valuable than a bank account to unlock lands beyond the horizon. Of course, eventually bank accounts do run dry no matter how far one stretches their dollar and the necessity to re-enter orbit for the next hustle in life becomes warranted.
Traveling and living with limited funding did teach me how to translate vulnerability into creative resiliency, industrious grit, and social networking finesse. Volunteering, hosteling, camping, couchsurfing, and leveraging extensions of social acquaintances and casual encounters enabled intimate experience where luxury lacked. The character instilled and technique learned then continue to inform my modus operandi today.
Approaching the age of 30, I began to think I may have just f**ked around a bit too long in life, though. A Great Recession and a penchant for obstinately pursuing passions and idealism over practical compromises like settling into a life selling insurance or taking the corporate career du jour began to seem like overplaying the pair of “9“s in my hand when all but the last opponent holding a royal flush at the table had folded.
Fortunately, that idealism, grit, and a nearly seven year arc of serendipitous social networking seeded by my eccentric coffee roaster in Ann Arbor, Michigan, led me to Boulder, Colorado; an eventual decade long career developing solar energy farms powering perhaps more than 17,000 American homes; and the first true stability in my adult life. It was like stealing “home” in the bottom of the 10th inning to win the World Series. I still fear to pinch myself too hard at times should I wake up from it all.
But sometimes, even when in full stride, we do well to stop and smell the proverbial roses.
Just last year, Boulder became the place I had lived longest in my life – a comfortable and idyllic pocket of America a pedestrian and outdoorsman like me could call home indefinitely. My career also peaked with the completion of the final project in a long running development portfolio I had willed into existence from conception to construction. But even my generous annual PTO quota spent adventuring on recent backpacking destinations such as Iceland or the Scandinavian Arctic in recent years began to feel like teasers and appetizers to a main course.
As the saying goes, “when you are young, you have time and health, but no money; and as you become middle age, you have money and health, but no time; and finally, when you retire, you have money and time, but lack the health to enjoy it all.” A catch twenty-two of sorts.
A cheat code to life was needed.
But the prevailing wisdom of societal expectations, curated milestones, and careful conservatism prove a seemingly unsurmountable hurdle.
I should be taking a mortgage, buying a sports car, and jockeying for a Director title; let alone getting married and starting a family. Those may all still come, but a particular wanderlust deep in the soul sought her liberation.
Yet could I really walk away from all that I had I built, or otherwise had waiting in front of me?
And had I become soft as I aged, willing to console myself with 2-3 week vacations in lieu of open-ended adventure?
The original idea, an open-ended odyssey brewing since adolescence, beckoned devilishly. And as the spring came and the time to pounce arrived, I found the audacity to embrace a return to the novel and unknown and discard the prestige of peaking career perks and midlife stability to recognize what I have now and seize what I may never have a chance to do so again.
A particular passage from Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan came to mind when I drafted a final resignation letter to my beloved employer:
While I certainly did not curse my life by any means (quite the opposite), I did know within that my fervent obligation was to actuate the life I dream to live.
All too easily, while swept away in the current of life, we only have the energy to focus on staying afloat and attempt to choose the best course between the boulders in the river approaching us.
But what if we could take ourselves to shore, catch our breath, dry off, and scout the river from the bluff, while enjoying the view along the hike to the top?
Clearly, the confines of even the most generous PTO plans would severely handicap the exploration to be had and the release from the current I was in. I needed to swim to shore.
That is precisely the purpose of this Journey to Nowhere in Particular. An intentional pause. To relish what one has worked so hard in life to obtain, reward the manifester of inner dreams, and be willing to risk the comfort of the future with the prize of the present, Today.
As the philosopher Alan Watts also concluded, we often spend hours, days, and months in careful deliberation of our lives, which is undoubtedly of inherent value, but then in a spur moment of final necessity, we make a snap decision. I knew it was time. Now or never.
Carpe annum!
So where will this journey take me?
Surely, nowhere in particular. I will likely end up back in Boulder, Colorado, at the end of it.
Or not.
I desire an open world of possibility. Serendipity to the Xth exponent.
I do not seek to ‘find’ myself as some may surmise. I have known who I am since I was younger than most. It’s the experience, adventure, and people that I value, not the specific summit, status, or destination that delivers meaning to my life. I do not aim to come back with an answer to any question I was asking before I set off, rather to open my eyes to the daily world around me, and perhaps exhaust my wanderlust until I could feel ready to root myself into a ‘back-to-the-land‘ existence where I tend a healthy vegetable patch, grain field, and pasture.
But in practical terms, a framework and a foundational idea are important for triggering the inertia of opportunity.
To that end, and in recognition of my love of geography and pedestrianism, I would like to originate my journey where my life abroad first began in Finland, and then aim to backpack many of the great mountain ranges of the world that have inhabited my imagination for years, namely the Tatras, Carpathians, Caucasus, Tian Shan, and Himalaya. Furthermore, I shall aim to link as many of them as possible traveling overland as reasonable, politically feasible, and generally safe enough to do so.
There is a beauty in knowing the spaces in between the destinations that I have always romanticized, just as long linear journeys on month-long thru-hikes have always enamored me. It’s as much about the journey and appreciating the context and the distance in between, than the glamour of any one particular place one might seek to know.
Attempting to explore them all in one year requires a seasonal flow targeting to arrive to the Tatras and Carpathians (Poland, Slovakia, Romania) in June, the Caucasus (Georgia) in July, the Tian Shan (Kyrgyzstan) in August and September, and the Himalaya (India, Nepal) in October and November. After that, my primary concept ends and limitless possibility beckons, including heading home to restart my quotidian life.
But, I delayed the start of my journey by two weeks due to a last minute effort to secure a visa to China…just in case… so that ought to be in contention. Maybe even New Zealand could enchant me. That would be truly epic. And certainly involve a plane ticket, most likely. Let’s see.
In seriousness, I can hardly think quite that far ahead, and that’s the point. Maybe I meet the love of my life on a train in Poland or join a nomadic shepherding community in Kyrgyzstan, ceasing to advance my journey further at the time. That’d be great.
But if none or only some of this ever happens, I am sure it will be exactly what was most meant for me in the end. If it’s a year, four months, or a new life elsewhere, it is my story to write.
I hope you enjoy each chapter as much as I do.
Stay gold…
