Planning for No Plans

At 26 years old, I had never been issued a passport. To that end, I had also never been overseas. Not that I hadn't traveled, but just that I had never flown across the oceans and walked through foreign Customs. I had been to Canada and Mexico a number of times, and I do remember walking past some pretty official-looking folks in uniform while strolling across the border(s), but in those pre-911 days, you could practically enter a neighboring country with a letter from Mom to confirm U.S. citizenship.

"Dear Sir/Madam, My daughter was born and raised in the United States and is a legal U.S. Citizen. She has my permission to enter your country for a few days, but if she gets into any trouble, you can keep her."

My mom always hated the Spring Break trips to Mexico. She was so certain that I was up to no good and I'd get myself into trouble. I often was, and I occasionally did...but that's beside the point. The point is that at 26 years old, I was half-way through graduate school and preparing to launch an actual career when I got bit by the Travel Bug in a serious way. I was working on my thesis project and looking for a job when it occured to me that I just wasn't comfortable with the idea of a Five-Year Plan. The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to make any plans at all...making plans meant making commitments, and taking on responsibilities, and settling down. I didn't want any of those things.

I needed to travel, and I needed to do it big. The more I thought about it, the easier it was to convince myself that if I were ever to travel without abandon, to really do it big, I was in a pretty good position to do so. My career was young, I was single, no kids, no mortgage, and had deferrable student loans. I knew - just KNEW, in the pit of my soul - that I had to travel. Big time.

I needed money, I needed a passport, and I needed a backpack. I needed some maps too, and a bunch of other stuff, but the money, passport, and backpack were most important. So I finished grad-school, got a job as an Environmental Planner with a great little company, moved home with my mom, and worked my ass off for a year and a half to pay off my credit cards and build up my Travel Fund. I also met a man who would change my travels - and my life - in a big way...