We’ve all read that article: Don’t Date a Girl who Travels.

I’m sure we’ve even read the follow up articles that suggest dating a girl who travels isn’t all that bad after all—if you can live with the fear of waking up and having her vanish overnight, leaving nothing more than a few scribbled words on the back of a Lonely Planet page, and that’s if you’re lucky.

I have been that girl for my entire adult life. As soon as university let me out of its grasp, I was on the next flight out of the country. One one-way ticket after another from Bali to Thailand to India with no plan to return.

On my first few solo travels abroad, I am still unsure whether I was fearless, naive or completely stupid.

Alas, I remained unscathed by the experiences that I look back at now and both laugh and cry at the antics I displayed without a care in the world. Perhaps that was exactly it—I didn’t have a care in the world. My concerns revolved around whether I would take the 8:15 bus from San Jose to Punta Mona or the 9:27 bus to Dominical. Or maybe the 10:20 ferry to Montezuma? In the end, it didn’t matter—I did them all. Perhaps my greatest concern was finding vegan options, which were a little more unheard of a decade ago, and completely unheard of in small provinces in Panama or Manama. But there were always bananas. And black beans. And in desperate times, tinned corn.

Traveling in what were probably the last few years before internet and social media changed travel as we know it, the world was as big as it was small. The more places I visited, the more I wanted to find. The more locations I trekked to, the more I discovered that six degrees of separation wasn’t a theory—it was a fact. Without booking.com, Trip Advisor, Facebook (gasp!) or Google Maps, travel was much more organic; it was spontaneous, it involved synchronicity, intuition and damn luck at times.

Without being able to pre-book, I ended up sleeping in a makeshift tent on the stage of a Reggae Bar one night in Tonsai. Without being able to see a hotel on a computer screen before making a reservation, I ended up in some hotel rooms that I am certain were no different than the cells of a third world prison. Without Facebook, my backpack would fill with tiny pieces of paper with scribbled names and emails, with guesthouse business cards, and destinations would be inked on the back of my hand that my dorm buddy assured me I simply had to find my way to.

I vowed I would never know another way of life.

I’ve tied strands of my own hair to pillars on remote beaches, which apparently makes a pact with the universe that we will return there again one day. And I did. Lovers came into my world and left again, each one teaching me new life lessons, but above all, what it meant to give fully and live in the moment, without worrying about what tomorrow may bring. Strangers on a bus became travel companions for months at a time as the open road carried us forward and a lack on language skills left us clinging to each other in order to string a single understandable sentence together. Flights weren’t just a way to get from here to there, they were book chapters for me; a take-off often was characterised by a silent tear or two while a landing was a fresh page, a new adventure, a continuation of the larger journey seen in a new light.

I held no regrets. In fact, I didn’t even understand that word, for each choice was made by an instinct that fades when real life obligations (and clocks) set in. If I wanted to stay somewhere, I stayed. If it was time to go, I knew it, and often I would disappear just before a rising sun could light my way.

My travels slowed slightly as I became comfortable in places that felt like home upon touch down. San Francisco, Vancouver, Koh Phangan, even inner city London. I understood that the people you share your life with are your family and you will do anything to keep that family united. I learned that above having a tribe around you, it was most important to have a relationship with yourself, that on the road, you had to be your own best friend. Most of my wanders were solo endeavours, eclipsed with brilliant soul mates and angels along the way.

Sometimes I ached for places whose jungle symphony had rocked me to sleep, or patches of sand that knew the indentation of my naked body, or square meters of sky whose stars knew all that I wished for in this fleeting world. And yet I knew that my road had no final destination, only a multitude of forks for me to decipher one by one.

I don’t know if age changes us or if change is simply inevitable. I don’t know if there are choices we make along the way that impact us indefinitely and cause small splinters in the chambers of our heart. Maybe as we get older, our priorities shift no matter how much we assure ourselves they won’t. Maybe when we meet true love, the world as we know it shatters and rebuilds itself again in a single moment, but in an entirely new way, undetected by the naked eye.

I always saw a silver-haired version of myself in a window seat in Paris, on a motorbike in Vietnam, on a daybed in Bali. Always, I was alone. The women whose lives inspired mine had been the same—women in their 40s and 50s, free as elegant birds, still wandering, still seeking.

Eventually, it was the seeking I questioned. What did these heroines of mine seek?

You guessed it: Love. A home. A nest. A life, shared.

Love turned up in my life one day in the country of my birthplace. He didn’t barge into my life, he tiptoed. He didn’t seduce me with actions, he offered me a world he created with words. He didn’t want me to surrender my life for him, which is exactly what made we want to.

For the first year or so, my mind was at constant battle. I had two voices in my head. One was screaming of the life I was missing—the freedom, the adventure, the promise of endless opportunity. The other voice was new, she fought for love, she fought for new dreams that had snuck into my mind during nights curled in strong arms, dreams that spoke of small feats that could only be accomplished through a duration of time spent in one place. I took huge leaps. I started a vegetable garden. I purchased a winter coat that I knew wouldn’t fit in a backpack. I started to buy books that weren’t simply second hand dog-eared texts that I would pass on to a random stranger once the final word was digested.

This love of mine, he had some beautiful shackles and sweet yet heavy luggage. He had dreams that lived on the road but realities that lived in a mind prone to guilt and insecurity. He saw the reflection of the life he wished for each time he looked into my ocean eyes. And one day, we stepped into that world, hand in hand. We narrowed our lives to all that we could carry, we said goodbyes with half answered promises, we ventured to an unknown world with little more than butterflies in our tummies and stars in our eyes. We rode deserted island roads at dusk and watched days turn to months by the light of the moon. We sent an email here and there, made a phone call where need stepped in, but the reality was the road was our own, the freedom of my solo wanderings was the same, only a million times better.

In my mind, those two voices chatted. Before we surrendered to life on the road, the voice that longed for endless adventure dominated. On the road, the voice that longed for a small cabin of our own, two Siamese cats, a kitchen stocked with homemade condiments and a light-filled office filled with books and scribbled notebooks plagued me daily.

The humidity that had once cooed me to sleep now cursed me with restless nights. The open roads on the back of a bike that had once been the absolute thrill of my life now filled me with a touch of uncertainty and trepidation. I spent countless silent hours analysing these thoughts, questioning their validity and trying to rationalise them. I spoke confidently to myself daily about how this current life we shared in Bali was what I had always dreamed of. But despite the stern nature of my voice, I knew I wasn’t convincing myself. To be honest, I was angry at myself. I felt like I had failed, like the stumble into my 30s was causing hormonal obstacles that were bound to pass and my desire to sleep forever in the back of a van would surely return in no time.

Our 20s surely are something. A decade of absolute freedom, endless adventure, absolute fearlessness. Perhaps it makes sense that as each decade of our lives rolls around, we are bound to change. We don’t throw tantrums like three year olds our whole lives (well, most of the time). We don’t giggle and gossip like teenage girls for our whole lives (well, most of the time). So does it make sense that we don’t live our entire lives in festival campgrounds or sleeping in airport lounges? Maybe it does.

Maybe the next decade of my life will involve building my own business, writing a book, getting married (gasp!) and taking holidays (double gasp!). Holidays? The girl on the road despised holidays. Holidays were for people who hadn’t yet discovered that life could be an endless holiday! I have learned, more than anything, to let go of needing to be a certain person and define myself in certain ways. I have learned to love and accept change, to be true to my heart and that wanting a couple of kittens over a few stray geckos is okay.

I can’t help but think back to a conversation that happened a couple of years ago:

Looking back now, I was on the crest of this change in my life, yet I was still very much attached to the absolute unwavering fact that my life would be lived on the road. I was in London, staying with one of my heroines, and we were packing for a festival. I had my usuals—wings, glitter, impractical clothing that made perfect sense in my eyes. My beautiful friend, recently turned 40, was packing woolen socks, a pair of ear plugs and struggling to fit a full-size mattress into the boot of her car. We laughed about it, and she said that would be me in 10 years. She went home early from that festival and as I hugged her goodbye and asked her why she wanted to go, she looked me in the eye and said she craved her own bed, her home, her comfort. I told her I understood when, of course, I didn’t at all, and she called me on it. “You don’t understand, but you will, one day.”

One day, a day I promised would never come, did. And I couldn’t be happier.

I haven’t said goodbye to my beloved road for good. I still gaze out the window daily and make sure it’s still there. But I’m not dreaming of greener pastures in a mystical elsewhere. It took me a while to realise that the intricate beauty of everyday life is equally as breathtaking as the grand sweeping views you glimpse on the road.

 

 

Author: Kelly Fielding

Image: ML van Dam/Unsplash

Editor: Emily Bartran