The True Gift of Travel

Beyond the hikes, the views, the experiences, an inherent gift of traveling is the people met on the journey. The shared traveler identity transcends differences of nationality, age, and gender. Discussions of life´s fundamental quandaries are engaged at great ease. Dynamic subjects of love, happiness, regret are taken up and treated with patient care and genuine consideration. Time is not wasted on trivialities. A pure honesty is possible. There is no pretext. There is no tomorrow. There is just the now. Only one opportunity may exist to draw the essence of another´s experience from the conversation. No time is wasted on verbose proclamations that serve to glorify the speaker. Only unfettered insight remains.

My trip has been blessed with unique, inspiring people. Even some of the briefest of encounters has had profound impact. Just tonight I sat down with a couple from California. They had just finished two years working in El Salvador with The Peace Core. John is a fellow flyfisherman and, oddly enough, he had fished with a guide that I fished with in Montana years back. After chatting about fishing in Argentina, we naturally progressed into an in depth conversation about life. John has a fantastic story. During and after college, he worked as a forest fire fighter- commonly known as a Hot Shot he explained. This seasonal employment allowed him to travel the world. After seven years of fighting blazes throughout North America, he got a job working as an environmental consultant. After some years behind a desk, now with a wife and a big house, John and his wife decided to give everything away and enlist in the Peace Core. They left the comforts of their lives, and moved into a ten by ten cement room in El Salvador. For two years they lived in an unheated room, taking cold showers every morning. Both beamed as they recounted a taste of their experiences. They were treated like celebrities in this village made up of 300 people. Families invited them to have dinner, and would insist on slaughtering their only, old chicken to honor them. The locals were intensely interested in them and were grateful for their service and concern. John and his wife will return to El Salvador before finally returning to the states to begin again. John is considering going into the foreign service as some form of retirement from the road.

While I am alone here in a foreign land, I am continually comforted by these magical encounters. Meeting people like John validates and inspires a unique approach to life. Society , American society at least, seems to expect individuals to adhere to some decided norm. Opportunity and future happiness is presented in defined avenues. Breaking from this expectation can be difficult. Yet when liberated from social pressures, one´s true identity is free to bloom. The first step may be to realize that there is no universal definition to life. It is like a color. Life is beyond explanation. So instead of picking from the set choices in life, I am setting my compass to happiness. The difficult part is having the courage to follow the bearing of this compass.