Winter Spark (or, Why I Started Traveling)

Although a lot of people ask me why I traveled so much (I wrote a blog about that here), very few people ask what made me decide to start traveling in the first place. They’re smart that way— it’s a rather long story. But, since you have the option of walking away from this blog if you get bored, I don’t feel guilty about telling the whole story.

As with anything, there were several factors that led me to a semi-nomadic life, and a lot of events led me to that decision. However, there was one clear tipping point.

In December of 2008, at the age of 19, I was working five jobs— writing teacher, drama teacher, online writing tutor, freelance author, and Christmas actor. I loved each of my jobs, but with a total of 75 students plus my two extra jobs, I had little time for anything else. My friends noticed me wearing down; I noticed it too. Even after the Christmas season ended and I was back to four jobs, I felt like my life was a madhouse.

In January, I was editing my online students’ papers. The assignment was to write a letter in response to a prompt on a supposed college assignment: “Relate a meaningful travel experience you have had and how this experience affected your life.”

Look how young I was! (Okay, fine, I still look like that…)

And golly, what stories they had to tell. From scout camp in the Rocky Mountains to week-long tours of Western Europe, they told of family vacations, school outings, and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

Most of the papers weren’t very well written, and very few of their first drafts actually explained what was meaningful about their trips. But even the stiff, unclear writing brought my imagination to life.

And then something occurred to me that, for some reason, had never occurred before. I had two online jobs— my tutoring and my freelancing. If I pinched pennies, I could live on just that income. And with these jobs, there was no reason that I couldn’t travel anywhere in the world.

I remember sitting in my comfy gray chair at the desk my dad had made for me, fingers resting on the keyboard of a 1995 Macintosh the size of a mini-fridge, staring out the wintry window and letting this realization sink in. 

A couple days later, on a walk with my mom, I told her, “I think I’m going back to Bellingham.” I had been to this city in Washington state the previous summer to do some mission work. “This time, though, I want to go for a couple of months.” As those words left my mouth, I stepped into the street right in front of a moving car. 

Although I managed to dodge the vehicle, I’m sure that put my mom right at ease. But my mom, being my mom, told me, “Okay, go for it.”

It took me about eight months to get all my plans together. I bought a laptop, finished out my semester of in-class teaching, and saved up all summer. I turned 20 as I tried to figure out the best way to experience Bellingham. An unexpected move for my family made me shorten my travel plans to one month instead of two. But at last it happened, and I found myself on a plane to Washington.

After that, I never looked back. Travel and I had fallen in love forever.

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