Don't Bring California With You.

If you’re open to it, you meet people on the road who quickly and unapologetically leave marks on the rest of your life. You know the types. The bearded and salt-crusted old fisherman in Sweden or the woman doing laundry in a riverbank in Sumatra. Your interaction with them may be five minutes or five days in length but before the conversation wraps you can already spot the telltale signs of a gem of wisdom that is going to echo through your next decade.

You ask a simple question or make a gesture, often the simpler the better, and they soften or smile. They let you in, inch by inch, and share a window into their world that in-turn completely upends yours. This is the part of traveling that I try my damndest to carry into my day to day life back home. Shit, it’s this part of traveling that I went to grad school to sharpen. It’s the listening to be had while traveling that keeps me coming back.

Jim, was one of those people. One of those folks from the road who didn’t feel he was worth listening too but here I am, four years later on the other side of the world, meditating on the words he rattled off at a coffee shop in Wrangell-St. Elias, Alaska.

My wife, Jenelle, and I were on our way to McCarthy, Alaska and stopped at a coffee shop 120 miles from where we left that morning and 40 miles from where we needed to be by sunset. It was a small, log-cabin style building with outhouses in the back and picnic tables in the gravel parking lot to make up for the limited space inside. We got out of our rental car, stretched, placed our orders, and sat outside as we soaked up the rare bits of April sun in Alaska.

That’s when Jim pulled up in his Toyota pickup and greeted Sally the barista by name. He walked up to the counter and she took his thermos from him. Refilling it with his drink of choice from memory. He wore aged blue Carhart denim and a low, well worn, baseball cap. His smile sat genuinely on his face and everything he did was done with conviction. Each step was well earned just as each sip of his coffee looked cherished.

He was a stranger you couldn’t let go. “Do you live around here?” I uttered out as he made his way across the gravel and back to his car. He paused, and affirmed, that led to another question, and then another and 30 minutes later Jenelle and I were soaking up his every word. He told us he lived in a cabin 30 minutes up the mountain. He built it with his ex-wife 35 years ago. 

She lasted one winter before leaving. “We built that place together in the fall,” he said “But come springtime she packed up and left,” he took a sip from his coffee for dramatic effect before a smirk crossed his face, “Hadn’t heard from her since.“ As he expanded on the story he clarified that “she didn’t stay because of me, but this place certainly didn’t help. It’s cozy, comfortable, relaxed and, fortunately, not for everyone.”

Our mugs crept toward their ends as he talked about how no one lived in the Alaskan bush for comfort. “If you don’t want to be warm, don’t get firewood. If you don’t get thirsty, don’t get water.” The wrinkles on his face softened as he spoke. “Procrastination is optional and if you want modern amenities, you need to remember—pumps, pipes, panels, that can all break.” 

This was the wisdom of bush-man Jim that stuck with me, “folks move up here from California to escape the cities — but they end up bringing California with them.” As he caught up with his thoughts he expanded “Makes you wonder why they came here in the first place.”

Our cups were long empty at that point but as we started to pack up and head to our cars I asked one more question “Do you have a phone?” His sand-paper hands gripped his thermos and his soft eyes gleamed, “I do own a phone,” he said, “but the best part of owning it is turning it off.”

Sitting here in Portugal, basking in the afterglow of the Azores, the old man’s words have been echoing in my head. If I buy a SIM card to give us 4G wifi on an island that I’m going too to escape the pings, buzzes, and chirps that come with 4G WIFI, am I bringing California with me? If I search out the creature comforts of a bed exactly how I like it (dodgeball firm but with a generous amount of summertime lawn-like cushion and marshmallow soft-ish pillows but not feather-soft pillows like a psychopath) or go into a restaurant and ask for a menu in English am I expecting California?

To what degree are you devaluing your experience if you bring your comforts with you or expect them to be there when you arrive?

Frankly, sleep-number jokes aside, I’m the first one to volunteer to sleep on the floor when need be and I’ll eat whatever the locals are eating or do what I can to try to experience what life in the place really is. Maybe it’s due to the 2019 of it all or the fact that I’m getting a little older, but these days I find myself waxing poetically about the way I travel just as much as I ponder about the fact that I get to travel. 

To leave your home by choice is, by virtue, a privileged endeavor. The privilege gets you to the place you want to experience and that’s the easy part, as much as we all often gripe about the expense. These days, however, I find myself wrestling with setting that privilege down once I land and leaving California where it belongs.