Meet the Journeymen

When approaching the destination that so many had told us was the cornerstone of our personal and financial success, each of us came to the increasing realization that a life lived by an insipid path laid out before us, lacking the gnarls and sinews of a path carved by our own experience, was cheating. Each of us garnered the proverbial taste that whet our travel palate in separate travel experiences. Beddor found his moxy on a 3 month backpacking trip through China and Southeast Asia. Berken and myself both had divergent study abroad experiences under the auspices of the eternal city, and Alex spent a semester roaming the glens of Scotland. While one might think that 3 months to a year of consistent travel would sate our travel appetites, such a short period of time abroad has only given us a greater awareness of all that we haven't seen. Textbook wanderlust.

Rather than submit to the role we seemed destined to play in the work world, we made a pact 18 months ago in an Old Chicago that this trip needed to happen. Since then it has been a consistent barrage of plane tickets, immunizations, visas and excitement! Rather than a hurried segue into routine, we have chosen to discover that dominant primordial beast that gnaws at the feet of every man's spirit and calls us to do more. Some have called this trip an escape from the reality that we will necessarily have to confront. Perhaps true. But what about travel is not reality? How is complete extrication from the daily luxuries of the American lifestyle and the infusion of oneself into one culture after the next not real? Is vulnerability a disability? Is security the only true reality? The work force, degrees, graduate school, fiscal responsibility - are these the only realities? Only if the world has nothing to say. But if it does, an openness, even a vulnerability to its words is far more real than any job. This trip is not an escape, but our own personalized graduate school, an education that we hope will be the cornerstone of our personal success. While romanticizing travel is easy, there is a fleeting spirit that calls us. And it is this spirit that we intend to find.