When I was 18, and had just graduated high school, I started theater school, like I had every summer for the past six or seven summers. We wrote plays, acted on grand stages, learned how to dance modern, tap, and jazz from teachers in New York and London. All of this happened in Fargo, North Dakota at a campus managed by the public school system, which meant this elite education, where we could frolic like the kids in the plays and movies we so admired, was free for Fargo students.
Every summer the classes were split into two sessions and after the first session, about halfway through the summer, my family went on our annual roadtrip out West to visit my dad’s dad and Yellowstone National Park so my mom could see the big lake and pretend it was the ocean and feel like she was home in California again. I said goodbye to my friends for the week, as if it were an eternity, and hopped in the car with my barely younger brother and however many dogs my family had that year. After a couple of days in Billings, Montana, smelling sagebrush and oil refineries, we headed into the national park and the rejuvenating smell of pine trees and tourists trying to get close-up shots of bison and grizzly bears. This year my parents had also booked a night in Grand Teton National Park at the marina, adjacent to Yellowstone so my dad could stare at the jagged peaks that reminded him of the mountains of western Montana and made him feel like he was home again.
On the last night of our stay my mom and I ran to the grocery store to grab something or other. It’s not important. While checking out the manager (as identified by a black polo t-shirt as opposed to a pine green one) started to small talk. I told him I was starting college in the fall, as I would tell anyone who gave me more than one second of their time. He told me I should work at the resort. “Ha, yeah. Maybe some year,” I said.
“I mean it, you should think about it. This is a really cool place. I could even get you a job tomorrow if you want,” he said. What a joker.
We walked back in the dark to our cabin, which the night before had to be raided by park employees to rid it of a rogue bat. My mom told my dad and brother about the conversation with the manager. And then, something happened to my anxiety-ridden mother that still to this day I don’t believe. (Maybe she was bitten by the bat.) “You should do it!” she said.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Get a job here. Stay for the rest of the summer. We can pick you up before school starts!” she said.
The rest of the details are blurry, but the next thing I remember is banging on the door of the closed grocery store and seeing the manager walk down the stairs from his office. After that, I remember sitting in a red pickup truck with his boss, or boss’s boss, named Raul or something, who wore a large cowboy hat. “Wave goodbye!” he said as my parents turned north and we turned south. I signed HR papers that I didn’t understand, was given a t-shirt three sizes too big, and told to hitchhike into Jackson, Wyoming as soon as I could for khakis.
Someone brought me back to the marina and showed me my room in the dorms. I had never been in a dorm, had no idea what to expect except what I saw in movies. My roommate was working so I silently absorbed her life: photos from college (she was in college!) some clothes on her twin bed that was made, with no one forcing her to do it. I don’t think I had made my bed in years. A couple of trinkets on a dresser. I threw my blue Easton backpack on my twin bed with bedding loaned to me by the resort. I had one change of clothes, some basic toiletries, and a flip phone that didn’t have service. I was taught how to use the pay phone in the hallway if I wanted to call anyone.
Over the next few weeks I learned how to shower in a dorm, had my first sip of alcohol (Franzia red wine mixed with sprite), hitchhiked, and tacked magazine clippings to my very own wall. I watched a drunk guy get tossed around in a dryer on tumble dry, I saw a bear up close and personal. I fell in love, deeply in love, but knew it was temporary and was okay with it. And as if I were living in my very own high school movie, cliches and all, before the summer was over I got a tattoo and climbed to the top of a mountain. All because I could.
That’s when traveling changed my life.
Or maybe it was a few years later after I graduated college and headed down to Chile to study Spanish before starting law school. For the last year of school I finally had a plan. Not a wanderlust plan, but a real grown-up plan: study for the LSAT, take it (twice), apply to law schools, study Spanish, go to school, become a lawyer. I had fallen for a boy who had his own grown-up plan to get his MBA at MIT and I wanted to keep up. I enrolled for a three-month program at an adult Spanish-immersion school where we had classes all day and slept in a dorm-style house or with families. Given my extensive experience with dorms I opted for the student house, AKA: Chilean Animal House. I met people from around the world, danced on tables with my housemates to their favorite Brazilian or German music, and barely woke up in time for classes. After about a month I went to the admissions officer crying my eyes out that I was exhausted and couldn’t take another minute of Spanish lessons. She recommended I take a trip and come back refreshed. My bank account was flush with student loan checks, carrying 6, 10, or higher percent interest rates, so — sure, let’s go to Buenos Aries! I can’t remember if I went alone and stayed at a hostel, or went with other students, but I made friends who were backpackers.
Legit, bonafide backpackers who traveled the world and carried Lonely Planet guides and wore ankle bracelets. I took a hit of their wanderlust life and was drunk in love with adventure.
I returned back to school and decided to move in with a local family so I could better focus on my classes but it was no use. I learned more Spanish while screaming songs at the bar with servers at 3am than learning past perfects or conjugations at 9am in a classroom. (Note to past self: you would have learned more in the classroom if you applied yourself, you idiot.) My interest in grasping the Spanish language in three months, and spending my student loans wisely, waned.
I talked to my parents every few days via Skype on the school computers. Around this time I started to hear back from law schools. They would update me when a letter came in the mail. “We regret to inform you…” “We regret to inform you…” And then, my mom: “You got a big envelope today!” Accepted to New York City Law School. And then accepted to Syracuse Law School. I was ecstatic. Two options! Both in New York! Which sweatshirt would I buy?
But then something happened. I can’t remember what triggered it — either a trip, or exhaustion, or a cerveza-infused dance party at the nearby club — but I one day outside of class I Skyped my parents: “I have decided I don’t want to go to law school. I want to keep traveling.” I’m not sure if my parents had given up on me or figured they couldn’t control me from thousands of miles away, but I had made up my mind. I wrapped up classes and headed to Argentina. For the next four months I backpacked alone or with friends I met at hostels and visited cities across Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Colombia. While visiting the southern tip of Argentina I met some fun people who said they were going to Antarctica in three days and I should join. I used my student loan money to buy a last-minute ticket on a 70-person expedition boat and headed south over the Drake Passage. Sometimes my big life change came up in conversation and everyone was validating: “You made the right choice.” These people were world travelers and everything they owned was on their back. I felt more at home than I ever had before.
That’s when traveling changed my life.
Or maybe it was after having a baby and feeling so confused, mourning the loss of travel and spontaneity, when Dave and I took a trip to southern California and I sat on the coast of Malibu, just off the busy highway, and turning my head to the sunshine and waves, felt so blissfully happy and it reminded me I could be happy again.
Or maybe it was when we visited the American War museum in Vietnam. We were so obviously American; there was no hiding it. And everyone was so kind and welcoming.
Or maybe it was that other time landing in Paris alone. Driving through Missouri in the middle of the night. Breaking down in Montana.
That’s when traveling changed my life. And it will change it again.