vagabonding

Favorite quotes from Rolf Potts‘ Vagabonding book: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel:

Out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don’t really need, we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts.

The freedom to go vagabonding has never been determined by income level; it’s found through simplicity – the conscious decision of how to use what income you have.

Vagabonding is not like bulk shopping: The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home – and the slow, nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.

“Seeing” as you travel is somewhat of a spiritual exercise: a process not of seeking interesting surroundings, but of being continually interested in whatever surrounds you.

Plus three of my all-time favorites from Henry David Thoreau:

One spends the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him.

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

Thanks, Rolf and Henry, for your example and inspiration!

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