Turistas. Hostel. The Beach. These are all examples of Hollywood’s poor representations of traveling with a budget and a backpack. So it was refreshing to finally watch A Map for Saturday, a documentary by Brook Silva-Braga that takes a realistic look into the world of long term solo backpacking.
While my month-or-sos away would not be considered long term by non-U.S. citizens who go away for longer, I found that I could relate to most of the content in the movie—the initial loneliness, learning how to meet people, settling into the coming and going, traveler’s guilt and what it’s like when you have to go home. Throughout the film, I felt like I was reliving many of the emotions I’ve had abroad.
There were moments where I thought the movie was a little vapid. I think this stemmed from my wanting there to be more of an underlying story or a unique angle. Something more edgy and captivating than following yet another advantaged young person on the road. But all in all, it’s a solid backpacking documentary full of inspirational tidbits. I’d recommend it for any past or potential backpackers.
As the film began, a traveler being interviewed by Silva-Braga supplied this quote about one of the most profound transformations traveling lightly and cheaply can instigate:
“When you have everything on your back, material goods don’t mean as much as they used to. That’s something you take with you for the rest of your life.”
Recently, I’ve felt and understood a joy that permeates my body and sustains me. This quote describes one seemingly simple, but loaded reason for my sense of fulfillment:
“It is the chiefest point of happiness that a [woman] is willing to be what [she] is.”
- Desiderius Erasmus
Beyond a willingness to be myself, there’s joy in I feeling like I can be accepted for being myself. When I am being what some might considered flawed—pissed off, childlike, or wanting to make non-PC humorous observations—I know there is someone around me who can understand me, laugh with me, or know that my funk will pass.
Both staying and leaving have aided in my development and acceptance of my imperfect self. I love traveling challengingly and deeply. I seek out strength gained through having to re-adapt… the destruction of self and the fortified rebuilding. While traveling has helped me define myself, remaining in one place has helped me solidify myself.
It’s given me the opportunity to reveal myself slowly through both personal and artistic interactions and find that there are people out there who accept quirks and flaws and whole people. Like any physical trip I’ve taken, this inner journey has been less scary and more beautiful than I imagined it would be before it began.
I spent the final afternoon of last year’s Pacific Northwest trip in a cafe called El Diablo. One of my Seattle friends always tries to convince me that the weather there is not that bad, but outside, the frenetic rain proved otherwise. The bright Latin America-inspired cafe felt like the perfect warm refuge. I skimmed through some local papers to kill time before I had to leave. In one of them, my horoscope read:
You’re in luck, Virgo. Not so much in the sense of winning the lottery or scoring a major award, but more in a spiritual sense. Do you know “Auguries of Innocence,” the poem by William Blake? I think you’ll experience what it describes: “To see a world in a grain of sand/ And heaven in a wild flower/ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/ And eternity in an hour.”
It summed up my trip completely. There was not much to “see” or “do”, it was more about enjoying and appreciating the simple things– the company of old friends, the freedom of a mini roadtrip, flower farms and snow-capped mountains, meeting interesting travelers and friendly locals, and a rainy afternoon spent in a colorful cafe.
“In the spring, at the end of the day you should smell like dirt.”
- Margaret Atwood
As I wrote last weekend, this past week was my Spring Break and I had no travel plans. So I contacted the awesome Lauren Quinn to see if she could take me on the Palomarin Hike she’d mentioned in her Top Three Travel Secrets post.
The day of our hike was super foggy. As we arrived to begin the hike, it wasn’t pouring, so we went ahead with it. Lots of winter rain allowed us to enjoy a few things Californians don’t take for granted– colorful wildflowers, incredibly green vegetation and an abundance of flowing water. Alamere Falls was a nice surprise, it wasn’t like any other waterfall I’d seen before. The water tumbles over the cliff and splashes onto the beach before draining into the ocean.
I used to hate getting dirty, now it’s something I enjoy from time to time. Partly it’s a throwback to my childhood and the other part of it is a sense of being close to the earth. After the hike, I was soaked in mud up to my mid-calf. I washed the jeans and socks I was wearing that day and they are still caked with mud. It was a good day.
“Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.”
- Colleen Wainwright
I am officially on spring break now. I often feel an urgency about taking advantage of my designated time off to explore a new destination. This year, I didn’t get much of a chance to plan anything for spring break. And I while the list of destinations I want to visit is long, I struggled to think of an affordable place that I really wanted to go to for just a week.
But I still halfheartedly searched for flight deals this past week before having a moment of realization– I was stressing myself out in an effort to find a place where I could de-stress. So I’ve decided to stick around, get stuff done (writing!), get a lot of sleep and maybe take a local trip to nature for a few days. Not as exotic or as exciting as I was hoping, but it sounds like exactly what I need right now.
