I Quit - To Travel. What Did I Learn About Myself?

I quit my job as a trainer nine years ago to be a paid backpacker.

Seriously.

If you’ve read earlier posts, then you may recall that I stuffed my country boy lifestyle into a then-two-year-old SUV and moved cross country to a culture and world completely foreign to me. While my resume lists the actual job title as teacher, in reality I was a paid backpacker traipsing across New England with groups of twelve to fifteen tweeners. Trust me, it’s not as sketchy as it sounds. It was more the sense of adventure that had gnawed at me for years being fulfilled than anything else; those travels truthfully covered seven states in ten months.

What did I learn?

1.     I don’t need a whole lot of stuff to keep me happy. I mostly wore jeans and t-shirts and a trusty pair of hiking boots scored on sale from EMS (Eastern Mountain Store – East Coast people should check it out, particularly the Worcester location) and since I was home primarily to sleep, the stereo, baby blue lamp, 27 dress shirts, fifteen pairs of dress slacks, and three suits were stuffed into bags underneath my bed. Aside from the Saturday jaunt into town to watch the Razorbacks football team play on ESPN, I really had little use for a TV.

2.     There’s no place like home. Regardless of where I found myself day-to-day, there was no place on earth like Conway, Arkansas. I failed to discover the extent of which I had become homesick, which made my final months in the woods exceeding miserable. The Connecticut portion of the Appalachian Trail – and photo at the summit of Mount Frissell – had nothing on pulling into the driveway on Friendship Road.

3.     People are people are people. Contrary to the misguided stereotypes, people in the Northeast are similar to my Southern brethren and I say this as a 28-year-old black man. We all work hard, play hard, and share similar values. I’m not understating racial profiling (it’s strange to for some people to see a brother in the woods, much less in their towns and bars), of which is very real, but we’re mostly in the rat race together.

4.     There’s really nothing special about backpacking culture…but it’s a unique point-of-view of life. Certainly, we all like to escape our troubles for a while or simply want a spice of adventure to our bland macaroni and cheese lives. The latter is why I chose to join Nature’s Classroom back in 2006, as my then-girlfriend provided the out I craved so desperately. Yet, I found that one thing I needed was good ol’ camaraderie with likeminded peers. No matter if you are a flaming liberal or a raging conservative we are all human beings capable of running the emotional gamut and enjoying a cold beer after an extremely long day.

5.     But it’s still freaking awesome! I strongly encourage you to travel often (and if possible, live somewhere outside your native region for at least six months) even if the trip is a complete crapshoot, the story is still there to be told. The world is vastly bigger than the 100-mile radius you call home or the annual trip to Destin.

Go, see something!