The Art of Manliness - The Vagabond Travel Ethos

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast travel can often

00:00:11.600 be approached as just another consumer good travelers quickly dive in and out of a place

00:00:15.380 check off the things they want to see harvest the requisite pictures to prove they were there

00:00:19.240 and wear their trip as a status symbol my guest rolf potts thinks there's a better way to approach

00:00:24.540 travel after exploring the world for years he wrote a book called vagabonding which laid out

00:00:29.100 the practicalities of how to execute long-term travel 20 years later he's back with a new book

00:00:34.080 the vagabond's way with reflections on the more philosophical side of that kind of travel which

00:00:38.520 you take on any type of trip today on the show rolf explains the vagabonding ethos which involves

00:00:43.340 slowing down being open to surprises and really paying attention to your experiences he first

00:00:48.280 discusses how taking an overly romantic view of travel can actually diminish the enjoyment of

00:00:52.560 traveling we then turn to the idea that seeking to take a more authentic approach to travel

00:00:56.560 shouldn't mean trying too hard to differentiate yourself from the quote-unquote typical tourist

00:01:00.920 and how to approach stereotypical tourist stuff with a nuanced view we discuss how to use the

00:01:05.360 idea of pilgrimage behind its religious connotations as a pretext for choosing places to visit we also

00:01:10.440 delve into how to deal with the culture shock that can come both from visiting a new place and

00:01:14.240 returning home from a long trip we enter conversation with how the attentive adventurous attitude which

00:01:18.900 underlies the vagabond's way can also be applied to exploring your own backyard after the show's over

00:01:23.760 check out our show notes at awim.is slash vagabond

00:01:26.360 rolf potts welcome to the show glad to talk to you brett so you are a travel writer and you've

00:01:45.860 written a lot about a travel lifestyle that you call vagabonding and you got a new book out

00:01:50.340 called the vagabond's way it's 366 meditations on wanderlust discovery and the art of travel

00:01:56.840 so it's one of these books you can just pick up and read a passage a day it's really nice

00:02:01.480 really quick hit so let's talk about vagabonding how do you define what is vagabonding and how does

00:02:07.840 it differ from a just like a two-week vacation somewhere yeah vagabonding is about sort of

00:02:13.880 intentionally taking time off from your normal life to travel in earnest not necessarily as a

00:02:18.940 vacation or a consumer act but as a part of your real life not as an escape from your life but as

00:02:24.420 an escape into your life and long term is a big factor in this it's the idea of traveling for a

00:02:30.900 year or if you don't have that much time six weeks or six months but basically giving over a time in

00:02:36.800 your life to travel and learning from that experience and broadening your life and sort of using that

00:02:43.400 journey as a way to see your life options and to educate yourself about the world's riches

00:02:48.640 so what's your experience with vagabonding how did you get started well when i was young i didn't know

00:02:54.860 that travel was something you could just make happen you know i grew up in the middle of the country in

00:02:58.760 kansas which is where i'm still based i didn't really know that many people with passports i thought

00:03:03.400 that travel was something that you did at the end of your life or at the end of your working life

00:03:08.900 when you had when time was given to you by society but my grandfather was a kansas farmer worked harder

00:03:14.920 than anybody i knew he started farming at age 15 when his father died had an eighth grade education

00:03:20.520 super smart guy around the time that he was given his retirement around the time that he was able to

00:03:26.460 enjoy his time in a non-work way my grandmother his wife his true love got alzheimer's disease and so

00:03:32.720 when i was a teenager when i was young i i saw in a very heartbreaking way that life doesn't just give

00:03:38.200 you time if i was going to travel i would have to create my own time to travel and so in my early

00:03:44.260 20s i worked as a landscaper for almost a year saved up all my money kitted out a van and traveled across

00:03:50.360 america for eight months and really had this life-changing experience i realized that travel

00:03:56.060 was not as difficult or dangerous or expensive as i thought it would be and i realized that travel

00:04:01.580 is something that anybody can give to themselves it doesn't it's not necessarily something that you buy

00:04:05.580 like a consumer act but it's something that you make time for whatever your means are and so one

00:04:11.840 thing led to another i moved overseas i started teaching english as a foreign language in korea

00:04:16.040 i started writing about travel and i traveled across asia for two and a half years and that's when i sat

00:04:21.900 down and wrote the book about that process of living through time wealth which is now almost 20 years

00:04:28.900 old and i've been talking about it ever since and i don't get tired of it are you still taking

00:04:33.840 extended travel trips i am in a different way than i was when i was younger and one great thing

00:04:39.600 about travel is that it can manifest in different ways at different ages and different things interest

00:04:43.840 you even in the same place so this summer i traveled for six weeks to paris where i teach a writing class

00:04:49.160 each summer and then also to norway place i'd never been to before but my wife has cousins there

00:04:54.240 and it's really fun to see norway through the eyes of my wife's family it's something i don't have

00:05:00.200 any connection to the immigrant sides of my family and so seeing norway through a very personal lens

00:05:05.680 was fun for me and then we went to the faroe islands before we came home and so that was a six-week trip

00:05:10.400 and that counts as vagabonding too so in the book you're trying to encourage this idea of not treating

00:05:17.540 travel as a consumer experience you know there's this idea you hear out there it's like well instead

00:05:21.860 of buying things buy experiences but you're still approaching things as consumer when you're buying

00:05:27.780 something as an experience so what are the benefits of your approach to travel i mean what have you

00:05:32.760 gotten out of these extended trips you've gone on you know how has it enriched your life and when you

00:05:37.820 talk to people like what are the selling points you give them to your approach well this kind of travel

00:05:44.500 allows you to slow down because rushing through any experience in life is a certain way to to miss out

00:05:50.560 on its nuances and to savor it and to really enjoy it so in giving yourself say a year to travel you

00:05:57.000 don't necessarily need to go to every continent in the world but maybe you can spend a year in a

00:06:01.540 handful of places in a way that that really allows you to be slow and be still and enjoy those places

00:06:09.320 you know it's funny i've been hosting writing classes in paris for many years now and a lot of

00:06:14.140 times my friends or my students they'll come and they'll get frustrated at how slow the wait staff

00:06:18.720 is at restaurants because they want to get out and experience paris you know they went off they want to

00:06:23.540 get out and tick off the things on their checklist and i used to be that way too but then then what i

00:06:28.280 realized is that you are experiencing paris by having a very slow lunch you know french people

00:06:33.980 don't rush through lunch to get it out of the way that is a very specific pleasure in their day

00:06:40.840 and it's not until you can relax and enjoy a three-hour lunch where the wait staff is not going to bring

00:06:46.220 you the check until you ask for it and they're going to be very careful in in asking your recommendations

00:06:50.880 because that's their job and they take pride in that i use that as a metaphor because that slowing

00:06:55.500 down is something we sometimes forget to do even at home to to have full life experiences and so

00:07:01.660 travel really taught me that long-term travel especially so i think a lot of people when they

00:07:06.080 think about extended travel they have this romantic view of it and they think well you know that the

00:07:11.780 golden age of travel is over that was like something that happened in the the 1890s or the 1960s

00:07:17.540 jack kerouac it's not as romantic anymore because you got yelp and you got these travel reviews you

00:07:22.180 got social media that's influencing people to come to these locations and everyone's got their

00:07:27.080 smartphone out taking a picture you disagree with this notion that traveling is no longer romantic

00:07:32.180 why is that well i think this has always been a part of the travel conversation you know years ago

00:07:37.980 when trains started going across europe people enjoyed that convenience but they also complained about

00:07:43.560 how it sort of took away from the experience from the immersive experience of going slow going on foot

00:07:49.440 or going by wagon and so i think if you read travel literature going back to the early 19th century

00:07:56.480 actually the 18th century lots of people have declared that travel was over that travel is ruined

00:08:02.440 right so for as long as we've been traveling the world as people people have been assuming that

00:08:09.360 that this place was more perfect a generation ago and maybe there were certain advantages a generation

00:08:15.800 ago but i think it's it's easy as i say in the vagabond's way the golden age of travel is always

00:08:21.840 right now that it's easy to fetishize the presumed purity of previous ages when in fact this moment is

00:08:28.220 all we have and and someday i actually quote the anthropologist called levi strauss who says i may

00:08:34.220 complain about the impurity of the cultures i see now but a hundred years from now another traveler may

00:08:39.220 express frustration at the reality that i'm seeing right now but in failing to see and so i think

00:08:45.120 that's a good that's good to keep in mind that in in in less than a hundred years in 20 years in 10

00:08:50.040 years people might be looking back to the moment right now in a way that feels pure to them when in

00:08:54.740 fact now is all we have so yeah i do try to discourage that cynicism that suggests that travel was

00:09:02.520 better in a long ago time and to embrace the romanticism and the and the beauty of the moment we have now

00:09:08.280 and you also talk about how over romanticizing travel can get in the way of having a good travel

00:09:13.880 experience how so well i think we often it's it's an expectations versus reality thing and i think for

00:09:21.140 all the preparation we do before we travel after a week on the road you're way smarter than any

00:09:26.060 information you could have gotten from a computer if you don't allow yourself to adapt to the real

00:09:31.520 world as it is as opposed to the filtered world you're going to be selling your travel short oftentimes

00:09:36.200 in cross-cultural situations you're looking for the tribesmen wearing traditional clothing in this

00:09:42.500 part of africa you're looking for these ancient art traditions in this part of papua new guinea

00:09:46.880 and you feel like you're being cheated if these people are wearing blue jeans and and using smartphones

00:09:52.820 when in fact i think human cultures have always changed and it's actually it's it's truer to those

00:10:00.920 cultures when those people they might be interested in art traditions they might have some clothing that is

00:10:05.560 traditional but all culture is flexible and jeans and smartphones do not ruin a culture it's just

00:10:13.020 you're discovering that those cultures are more complex more modern more changing than you would

00:10:17.380 have assumed before you left home so i think if you're always judging your travels through those

00:10:21.420 two-dimensional stereotypes by which you thought they would be then you're going to be selling it

00:10:25.760 short i think you have to be humble as a traveler and realize that the world can surprise you

00:10:29.320 and that's a great thing about travel is that regardless of what you plan it will surprise you in

00:10:33.900 in ways that can be amazing is that an american phenomenon to treat like travel like we expect

00:10:39.440 it to be like it's a small world at disneyland yeah i mean that goes into the consumer experience

00:10:45.500 that travel like they used to complain about glossy magazines now they complain about instagram it's

00:10:50.860 like the beaches are always empty you know the cocktails are always full there's sort of this

00:10:56.400 perfection that is a part of tourism marketing which is fine there's great experiences to be had on

00:11:01.380 the road but those expectations are never exactly like it happens in real time and so i think

00:11:07.180 sometimes when we go with a bucket list of sightseeing activities that's fine i have nothing against bucket

00:11:11.660 lists but sometimes it's those those uh subtler things that surprise you that are cooler than than any

00:11:17.720 instagram sunset photo that was probably faked anyway it was probably had 10 people in line behind

00:11:22.860 the person who took that instagram photo well another point you made i thought was really interesting

00:11:26.740 is to this idea that cultures are complex they're always changing and how how the cultures can respond

00:11:34.480 to travelers right they they see what travelers want right and this is part of their economy and so

00:11:40.560 in some countries right in africa where they're wearing blue jeans and using smartphones they'll actually

00:11:45.420 have like places where you can go and get your picture taken with the guys you know in grass skirts or

00:11:50.180 whatever and like the typical tribal wear because i understand that's what people want and that's part of their

00:11:55.220 economy yeah social scientists have talked about this there's different phrases to call this but

00:12:00.240 and actually as far back as the 70s like a governmental minister in tanzania is like yeah we created this

00:12:08.160 tribal village it's where the tourists want to go it might be fake but it's less of a hassle than

00:12:12.440 tourists wandering through villages asking where the real africans are when in fact real africans are the 0.89

00:12:18.180 guys in blue jeans you know um and i think that's that's an ongoing challenge i think people always have this

00:12:24.960 idealized image of how things should be but in a weird way it can be dehumanizing to look for the

00:12:30.320 person in the most traditional garb as the quote authentic person when in fact you know everybody's

00:12:35.800 authentic you know the real everything's real and you just have to understand that the world is so much

00:12:40.900 subtler and more complex and intermixed now that sometimes i write a chapter one of the chapters in my

00:12:46.320 new book is about how we often experience other cultures first through pop culture right and so if you're a

00:12:51.960 rugby fan you might be you might know more about fiji or australia than your average person if you like

00:12:57.700 anime japan if you like k-pop you might know more about korea before you go there and that's a great

00:13:03.380 thing and it's cool that we're sort of borrowing from each other culturally these days but if you

00:13:08.160 think that there's this absolute way that koreans or fijians have to be then that's not really paying

00:13:14.160 attention as a traveler and i think the vagabond's way the vagabonding ethos is really about paying

00:13:19.260 attention and listening and asking questions before you take pictures because one of the gifts

00:13:23.920 of travel is just is seeing how complex and interrelated the world is so you mentioned this

00:13:28.540 idea of tourists right how tourists can like it feels like sometimes it feels like a tourist can

00:13:32.860 ruin things and so you have this there's this idea amongst people who are like well i'm going to be

00:13:37.560 a real traveler and i'm not going to be a tourist you think that distinction is not very useful why is

00:13:42.920 that well i think it glosses over the fact that there were all outsiders in these new places

00:13:48.860 and it's funny i've been talking about this for 20 years ever since vagabonding i talk i try to

00:13:53.440 diminish the travelers versus tourists dichotomy and vagabonding simply because it's sort of this

00:13:59.380 this nightclub ethic where you're trying to be cooler than the other people in this very small space

00:14:03.840 whereas to the people in the host culture where you are you know you all look the same you know one

00:14:09.520 guy might call the other guy a tourist but to the to the host culture is just an american or just a

00:14:14.760 british person or whatever oddly enough even though i've been trying to downplace this distinction for

00:14:19.860 years people just they're trying to compliment vagabonding or the vagabonding ethos and they'll

00:14:25.340 say oh it's about how to be a traveler not a tourist right and it's like well okay i mean let's just try

00:14:31.400 and be better travelers in relation to ourselves instead of trying to be cooler than the next guy over

00:14:36.360 and i'm all you know a lot of the stereotypes attached to tourism is people being rude or culturally

00:14:41.380 insensitive and i'm i think those are bad things but it takes more than just differentiating yourself

00:14:47.980 to leave yourself open to a place so i really try to downplay that comparison that happens among

00:14:54.600 people who are all tourists basically that we're all we're all tourists of a sort some of us do it a

00:15:00.300 little bit better but at the end of the day we're all outsiders and that we should be humble about that

00:15:04.860 too and then you made this point that was interesting is that when you're vagabonding or you do sort of

00:15:10.540 extended travel looking at the tourist economy in a nuanced way is one of those i don't know

00:15:17.500 refreshing insights you can get when you take that slow long-term approach to traveling you just see

00:15:22.080 this well this is also part of this country's culture as well and it's interesting to see how

00:15:27.020 the the culture interacts with the tourists yeah and it's and sometimes tourism can be bad for places

00:15:35.000 especially when there's tourism overcrowding it over it's sort of superimposes a service economy on a

00:15:41.560 place that might be better served by more of a mom and pop economy but you know it can be weird how

00:15:49.280 tourists bring their ideas to a place i use an example in the book about how there was a tv show in

00:15:54.440 china that showed the french lavender fields and so a lot of chinese tourists started coming to france to

00:16:00.860 take pictures in front of lavender fields and the french people weren't really sure what to do with 1.00

00:16:04.600 them and so they sort of bent their local economy to have lavender massages and lavender products and 1.00

00:16:11.360 weirdly even though there was sort of an awkwardness to it i think it ended up being good for the the

00:16:15.800 economy in that part of france and it's happened in other parts of the world too i write about in the

00:16:20.300 book uh there's a part of panama that used to be just sort of this extractive plantain economy where

00:16:26.180 the the tribes people in this certain region would get hard currency by exporting plantains down the

00:16:30.880 river when they realized that they could host tourists in their own community and sort of share

00:16:35.160 their traditions in a way that outsiders would pay for and buy souvenirs and things tourism actually

00:16:41.160 diversified their economy in that place and other parts of the world papua new guinea as well art

00:16:45.600 traditions have been revived bali is another example by tourist interest in these local traditions and so

00:16:52.660 that's part of the complication or the complexity of the travel experiences that i was talking about

00:16:57.200 is that sometimes if practiced mindfully you can really support communities by just taking an interest

00:17:02.320 in and spending time there and using local guest houses and buying souvenirs and eating at local

00:17:07.300 restaurants and and listening and engaging this you know that dynamic can also happen here in the united

00:17:12.880 states so my family went to a dude ranch in wyoming this summer and what i was interesting a lot of the

00:17:20.760 guests were from south america there's like a big family from germany and i later learned that germany

00:17:26.460 in germany cowboys and indians are like a really big deal and so these guys came to united states to 0.93

00:17:31.860 this dude ranch they just wanted the cowboy experience like they just thought that this was

00:17:35.320 a legit cowboy experience and you know i was thinking well no probably i know some cowboys it's this is

00:17:42.060 not it but i mean i didn't when you talked about that made me think of that experience i had at that dude

00:17:46.380 ranch yeah and and i've been using a lot of international examples but the same thing happens

00:17:51.560 locally too americans can take uh stereotypes to dude ranches and in fact sometimes i'm from

00:17:58.060 kansas i know you're from oklahoma kansas is not a very touristed place it's a place people

00:18:02.320 mostly know from stereotypes and if it's not the wizard of oz it's some sort of political generalization

00:18:07.660 and so sometimes they really when people visit me in kansas they ask questions that feel naive you

00:18:13.700 know that that are sort of through the lens of you know sort of this stereotype that kansas has

00:18:19.980 cowboys or that it's it's this very conservative and flexible place when in fact those are just

00:18:25.360 stereotypes from outside you can find those stereotypes but it's not necessarily that way

00:18:29.040 and i actually talk about you know germans have been interested in cowboy culture since the 19th century

00:18:35.040 when uh actually i i use a word in the book for it i i would mess up the german pronunciation but it

00:18:40.600 basically means indian enthusiasm and these german they basically read these pulp fictions about the

00:18:46.660 wild west that were very popular in germany but those pulp fictions were written by a guy from

00:18:52.040 saxony right you know he hadn't been to the united states he just read cowboy novels in english and he

00:18:56.920 wrote german versions which were very popular and so for a hundred years or more germans had been coming

00:19:02.380 sort of encouraged by the stereotypes from this pop culture vision of the american west

00:19:08.380 and they they come to the u.s and they sort of demand to see it in a way and that has bent

00:19:13.160 actually in the united states also you'll see dude ranches you'll see navajo gift shops that are really

00:19:19.400 sort of catering to stereotypes of what those places are like more so than what day-to-day life is like

00:19:25.580 there and so that's one thing i try to encourage in the vagabonding ethic be it in arizona or the other

00:19:31.800 side of the world to really slow down and let your expectations take a back seat to what you're seeing

00:19:37.720 before your eyes and to to let inquiry rather than stereotypes influence what you're going to do

00:19:42.940 there okay so it sounds like overall don't write off the touristy stuff all together and also like

00:19:48.780 don't try to out cool your fellow traveler because that's just not a good mindset to have going into

00:19:53.440 something and also you know also the stereotypical tourist stuff can be fun that's why you don't want

00:19:59.320 to shut yourself off to it completely it can also be good for the local economy but then also at the

00:20:04.240 same time like see this stuff see the touristy stuff in a nuanced way like don't go into with

00:20:09.260 your preconceived notions try to try to see what's what's there we're going to take a quick break for

00:20:15.000 your words from our sponsors and now back to the show so how do you pick a place to travel to is it

00:20:24.280 just like if you got that wanderlust for a specific place you would just follow that absolutely i think

00:20:30.760 this is something that can be over planned sometimes people people are trying to figure out

00:20:34.820 there's this language in the travel industry oh this place is hot you know this place is trendy this

00:20:39.180 place is the the place to be well that's that's kind of a bad decision you know to choose your travel

00:20:44.360 plans over right if you feel an urge to go to a place you know i use i talked about fijian rugby

00:20:50.720 before like if you love watching uh fijian rugby well go to go to fiji talk to people fijians love

00:20:56.820 to talk about that sort of thing just sort of follow those instincts and oftentimes there's a

00:21:01.900 sort of two-dimensional inspiration that like we love we associate travel with the eiffel tower so we

00:21:08.060 want to go to paris and see the eiffel tower that's great i was i hung out with my wife under the eiffel

00:21:12.220 tower this summer it was fantastic but what's beyond that you know so i think in a way your your input

00:21:17.700 your reason for going to a place is less important than what you do when you get there and i think as

00:21:22.380 much fun as you can have under the eiffel tower wandering off into those neighborhoods and sort

00:21:26.700 of following the smell of a patisserie or hearing the sounds of a music festival or just allowing

00:21:34.000 yourselves to be surprised and humbled by a city that is going to be rewarding regardless of where in

00:21:40.620 the world you go and oftentimes people complain about other tourists in tourist attractions and it's like

00:21:46.840 well that's fine but just go to a place that isn't a tourist attraction you don't have to try you don't

00:21:51.180 have to travel that far off the tourist trail to find a place that is more authentic to what you

00:21:56.240 thought this place would be i think allowing yourself to be flexible wherever you go sort of absolves

00:22:02.000 yourself from having too much pressure on where you go go to a place because it captures your

00:22:06.860 imagination and then whatever happens there is why you went there well you know the point you make in

00:22:12.460 the book that i liked was you can use these this idea of pilgrimages to help provide some structure

00:22:18.480 for your travels so how have you used pilgrimages or have you how have you seen people use pilgrimages

00:22:23.400 in their vagabonding well i i think you don't set limit on pilgrimage because there's there's grand

00:22:30.380 pilgrimage traditions in all of the major world religions and they've actually created a lot of a big

00:22:36.460 body of literature but your pilgrimage can be like going to the saint andrews course in scotland

00:22:42.400 because you like golf right you know it can be going to a candy factory in ohio that manufactures

00:22:49.100 your favorite candy bar that basically these pretexts are chances for you to go to a place that has really

00:22:55.180 blown your mind like i've never properly been to kenya i was only in kenya for less than a day but i grew

00:23:01.140 up being a runner and some of my running heroes were kenyans and so when i do go to kenya it will in part

00:23:06.280 be a a pilgrimage that honors my young self as a runner who really saw this place as a country of

00:23:13.840 excellence that produced people who could run faster than other people and so i think my my future

00:23:18.700 travels to kenya will probably be pegged to that and that's a pretty good reason too so really a

00:23:23.000 pilgrimage can be through the lens of anything that you love or are devoted for or even interested

00:23:27.760 in and so that can be popular culture that can be old traditions you know that could be muay thai

00:23:33.800 and going to thailand it can be almost anything and what the pilgrimage does it's it's a pretext

00:23:39.320 to go it's a pretext to have the journey and the experiences that happen along the way even people

00:23:44.320 who travel with the idea of religious devotion part of what makes arriving at that you know jerusalem or

00:23:52.540 mecca important is what happens along the way the the new experience of life and the new

00:23:58.140 self-sufficiency and surprise that happens along the way that's the gift of the pilgrimage be it

00:24:04.640 for religious reasons or for whimsical reasons i've got two pilgrimages that i've been developing

00:24:10.620 my head the first one is i want so i'm a big fan of teddy roosevelt so i'd love one of the pilgrimages

00:24:16.780 i'm putting together is visit the places that he visited in the united states so i've been to his

00:24:21.920 birthplace but i haven't been to oyster bay where he lived there's places here in oklahoma that he

00:24:26.780 visited uh that i'd like to go check out go to the badlands and that would be great to do the other

00:24:32.520 pilgrimage that i thought i've been putting together is my favorite book is lonesome dove

00:24:36.520 and i thought it'd be fun to follow the lonesome dove trail that was set out in the book but like

00:24:42.500 follow it like today and see what that's like yeah well actually that i i love to hear that kind

00:24:49.120 of thing because lonesome dove is that larry mcmurtry yes yeah well there's a specific town

00:24:54.980 in texas i forget the name of it where he had he owned a bookstore with like 30 000 books archer

00:25:00.180 city yeah archer city and so that can be a part of that pilgrimage that you are going through

00:25:05.740 those fictional destinations uh you know in this work of fiction and you know again i'm from kansas

00:25:10.940 people have gone to dodge city for generations because of the tv show bonanza i think and why not

00:25:16.640 you know what you discover again is more important than what brought you there and i love

00:25:20.920 the teddy roosevelt one too because because that could be an international trip as well yeah because

00:25:25.240 he had a very famous trip to brazil he had very public trips to africa and you could probably spend

00:25:31.540 the rest of your life trying to travel in the footsteps of teddy roosevelt and so i love it i i love

00:25:36.440 and i encourage listeners to think what you know what book what tv show what anything excites me and then

00:25:42.960 go to that place go to that place for that reason i mean a lot of people go to tunisia because of star

00:25:47.140 wars why well tatooine the desert planet is named after a town in morocco right and and actually they

00:25:53.240 filmed a lot of uh star wars in morocco and so people go there people go to new zealand for lord

00:25:58.180 of the rings right they they go to dubrovnik for game of thrones which sounds silly on the face of it

00:26:03.480 but i think if you can you know if you can enjoy your your your fanboy trip or your pilgrimage within

00:26:11.180 this framework but also allow yourself to be surprised and listen and slow down and ask questions

00:26:16.780 then you'll get so many more gifts than than than the parameters of the pilgrimage itself

00:26:22.180 what's your take on travel photography because i think a lot of people that's the big reason why

00:26:28.760 they go they want they want the pick like why do we have this urge to catalog our travel and

00:26:35.520 how can we do it in a way that it so it doesn't get in the way of our experience

00:26:39.160 that's a good question and it's a big challenge now especially now that that photos are so easy to

00:26:45.120 take susan sontag wrote a book called on photography in 1977 which is before the smartphone which is so

00:26:50.720 prescient and so smart in regards to how she talks about how we put the camera between ourselves and

00:26:56.580 an experience you know if in doubt the traveler will raise their camera instead of you know really

00:27:01.800 engaging with a with a place well now it's even it's far easier than 1977 to do this i also talk about

00:27:07.780 how the notion of the picturesque goes back to a minister called william gilpin in england in the late

00:27:13.020 18th century who wrote this treatise basically arguing that the visual sense was the most important

00:27:18.180 and that we travelers should should seek the to capture these these images in their minds well

00:27:23.980 about a generation after he wrote that they invented the camera and suddenly you could literally do

00:27:29.580 on paper what he was encouraging people to see in their minds and travel has become this very visual

00:27:36.640 thing we have all five senses but we usually just see it in a visual way which is fine i take a lot of

00:27:41.700 photos myself but still we have this maybe now more than ever we're tempted to put a camera between

00:27:47.160 ourselves in that experience and oftentimes that comes at the expense of true engagement with the

00:27:53.200 culture like oftentimes there's an ethical component to this because you'll often take pictures of people

00:27:58.180 you don't know without talking to them without engaging them you're sort of just harvesting

00:28:02.720 these stereotypical pictures from a place in africa or eastern europe or wherever where people don't

00:28:09.540 necessarily look like you and you're sort of objectifying those people through your camera

00:28:13.420 because instead of engaging with them and sort of getting a sense for who you are you're again placing

00:28:18.700 the camera between yourself and the experience and this happens quite a bit in social media too you

00:28:23.680 know that often the instagram stories we see the instagram pictures we see are sort of staged experiences

00:28:30.360 that have been staged for the camera more than they are in interaction with place so i don't want to

00:28:35.860 condemn using a camera as you travel because i use mine a lot myself but i do want to encourage

00:28:41.920 being thoughtful and being more dynamic about how you use the camera lens to navigate the travel experience

00:28:48.820 you know that point about how travel is it's it's more than just visual there's a we use our other

00:28:54.200 senses as well i've noticed this so i lived in tijuana for a couple years and in certain parts of

00:29:00.380 tijuana like the the i don't know how it is now that was like 20 something years ago the utilities

00:29:05.380 aren't well developed sometimes they just build houses shacks wherever and so you don't have any

00:29:10.640 infrastructure like plumbing and so in some of these places you'd have just black water going through

00:29:15.220 the street and there's like a smell to it right y'all and and every now and then like i'll catch a

00:29:21.180 whiff of it like i'm driving by the sanitation facility here in tulsa you catch that and i i catch a

00:29:27.500 whiff of that and i'm immediately taken back to like walk in the streets in tijuana or there's like

00:29:31.760 a you know certain types of house cleaning products they used in mexico and i'll be in walmart and walmart

00:29:38.000 now here in the united states they'll have sections where you can buy stuff you can get in in mexico

00:29:42.720 right that because there's a lot of uh latin americans that live in united states and also with

00:29:46.860 that and i'm immediately taken back to like some grocery store in in mexico i mean i i i wouldn't

00:29:53.760 have had that if it was just if i just focused on my my sense of sight for my travel experience

00:29:58.980 absolutely and this this ties into uh again what byung choo han the philosopher said about the scent

00:30:06.200 of time you can't fast forward smell smell is a great great sense you know you can probably fast

00:30:12.660 forward through this podcast you can fast forward through your netflix movies but you can't fast

00:30:17.340 forward scent scent demands patience and and being there and it's also very associative it's it's very

00:30:22.920 much a memory trigger and i love that you know i spent two years in in korea when i was younger

00:30:27.700 and when i'm in a grumpy mood my wife will will fix me korean food because it's sort of my comfort food

00:30:33.560 and so that's another that's another sense taste you know which which takes smell into account too

00:30:38.000 but just the idea that the eating kimchi or eating bulgogi will suddenly bring me back to a very specific

00:30:44.000 time in my life i think scent food is something that we all seek out as travelers and so that's a pretty

00:30:49.360 common thing that's like sight there's sightseeing people also sort of travel according to their

00:30:55.380 stomach but smell is a great thing i love that you have associations with tijuana through through

00:30:59.960 cleaning detergents or even bad smells i remember the first time i went to the tropics it was in the

00:31:04.140 philippines i stepped off the plane and i knew i was in a new place internally because it smelled like

00:31:10.040 no place i'd ever been before and the complexity of smell in a place like manila in the philippines

00:31:15.960 was unlike anything i had ever experienced and so there's a real joy for me in traveling in the

00:31:21.640 tropics simply because of the smell when you're traveling for long periods of time and you you're

00:31:28.520 outside of the tourist areas you're going to you're actually going to bump up against the cultures as

00:31:34.120 they are not as you maybe you you think they are this romanticized version how do you deal with that

00:31:38.640 culture shock well you embrace it and you realize that it is culture shock i think sometimes

00:31:44.460 one neurosis within culture shock is that this new culture is doing something against you it's trying

00:31:51.000 to make your life inconvenient or it's it's it's actively giving you anxiety when in fact you're

00:31:56.640 just in a place where everything is a little bit different and so i don't think there's a quick fix to

00:32:01.260 culture shock and i just talked about korea when i first got there it was very i i felt anxiety a lot

00:32:07.560 when i was first there because i wasn't really sure how things worked and so i think patience and

00:32:12.480 slowing down is is really a good way to deal with culture shock and to know that the longer you stay

00:32:17.560 in a place the more comfortable you'll get with its otherness and then suddenly you'll be learning

00:32:21.900 things that you had no idea that you were going to learn before you went there you'll be going to

00:32:27.480 the convenience store rather than the tourist restaurant and realizing that a convenience store

00:32:31.860 in japan or in sweden is completely different than the one back home and then suddenly you're having

00:32:37.200 this again this gift of travel you're finding these experiences maybe by working through the

00:32:41.760 culture shock you're realizing how much human cultures are similar but also how they're different

00:32:47.360 and how interesting those nuances are and those are the kinds of things that you'll savor i mean

00:32:51.680 who would have guessed that after going to tijuana you would later get sentimental from the place

00:32:55.500 through cleaning the detergent or sort of a rotting smell but that happens and again that's

00:33:00.160 that's it's not often put in tourist brochures but it's really a great memory that comes out of travel

00:33:06.960 so let's talk about coming home so you say you're gone for let's say a year in a different country

00:33:12.720 what challenges do you have when you're coming home from a different culture for a long period of time

00:33:17.560 well culture shock you know we've talked about culture shock in the context of going to a new place

00:33:22.580 there's sort of a reverse culture shock that can come when you when you come back home because i think

00:33:27.320 on the road time is experienced in a different way everything is new neurologically your hippocampus is

00:33:33.060 working a different way because you're solving problems constantly you're seeing new things constantly

00:33:37.080 you don't understand everything so you're almost in a childlike mindset i think it's easy to forget

00:33:41.240 how open to everything children can be and then suddenly you're back home and you feel changed you feel

00:33:47.240 like each day should be exciting and you know your friends are living these lives of routine and not

00:33:52.180 to knock those lives but because they've been having a different experience and so oftentimes you try to

00:33:57.000 and superimpose that travel high at home and that can lead to disappointment and it can lead to culture

00:34:03.880 shock and i think you there's sort of a re-entry process when you get back home that involves some

00:34:09.100 of the same tools you know don't don't judge your friends back home just because they're living in a

00:34:12.820 different way just like you don't want to judge the people overseas who are living a different way

00:34:16.440 but just realize that you can quietly talk about your travels in a way that doesn't sound braggy

00:34:21.800 that you can take that travel attitude back home you can look for surprises which is a gift of travel in your

00:34:26.520 own home you can look for permission to slow down and live in a more interesting way and really

00:34:31.920 embrace the present in a way that happened overseas well you don't have to save that for home one fun

00:34:36.940 thing i did during the pandemic when i couldn't travel overseas is i went for a 22 mile walk with

00:34:42.300 my wife to a town here in kansas called little sweden and it was really fun it was it was really fun to

00:34:47.780 experience so much at a place i thought i knew well and arriving at a place on foot was so different than

00:34:53.500 driving there which i've done a million times yeah so i think there are tools i think it's it's

00:34:58.900 never easy to transition back home that's always going to be a little bit of a shock a little bit

00:35:02.520 of a letdown but if you can keep that open-hearted open-minded attitude of travel when you come back

00:35:08.180 home and sort of reintegrate its lessons into your home life that's sort of a way of not ever letting

00:35:12.980 the journey end yeah you have a chapter that i like avoid being the pretentious return to traveler i think

00:35:19.300 we've all met that guy who comes you know he went on the trip and he comes back and they're like well

00:35:23.480 and sweden they do it this way you're like okay yeah yeah jeff we get it you went to sweden and it's

00:35:29.460 funny this has been a thing for a long time you had this quote from adam smith the economist and he

00:35:35.740 he wrote this about britain's young aristocrats who went traveling and he said the travel this is done

00:35:41.360 in 1776 the traveler commonly returns home more conceited he wrote more unprincipled more dissipated

00:35:48.420 and more incapable of any serious application than he could well have become in so short a time had

00:35:53.860 he lived at home so the whole pretentious return traveler has been a thing for 250 years it has and

00:36:01.200 it'll probably never end and i think one thing that happened during that time is that travel is seen as a

00:36:07.160 status object it's sort of a lifestyle accessory going back to the days of the aristocratic travelers

00:36:12.520 of the 18th century and so that in a way it's travel if for these return travels can be a form

00:36:19.120 of conspicuous consumption it can be a way of saying oh well look what i did but you haven't done

00:36:23.420 and it's like getting a sports car and showing it off to your friend if if you're taking this with the

00:36:28.640 wrong spirit i think adam smith's observation may have been a little bit i don't know if jealousy is

00:36:34.960 the right word but i think travelers aristocratic travelers came back to britain with a willingness to

00:36:40.940 break the rules because they saw that other kind that people things were done differently in other

00:36:44.520 cultures and they would sort of push the mores of their own society uh and in a certain sense

00:36:49.800 travels travelers return travelers can can push back against certain stereotypes that people have

00:36:55.060 back home but at the same time yeah you don't want to flaunt your travels like it's a new maserati

00:36:59.620 sports car you want to find a humble way to engage the conversation you had with other places

00:37:04.200 to the conversation you have at home with this place that used to be very familiar and is now

00:37:09.600 a foreign place is now the new destination on your itinerary and it's it's not that different

00:37:14.860 but it's different because you've seen other places if that makes sense yeah that makes sense

00:37:18.440 so i think a lot of people might think if you're a world traveler like yourself you know they would

00:37:23.860 live in some big cosmopolitan cool city when they're not traveling but you live in a small town

00:37:30.880 in kansas why did you choose that for your home base instead of some other cool town or city

00:37:36.980 well a couple big reasons one is is what's called geo arbitrage i think you've talked about it

00:37:43.120 before on this podcast the idea that some places are cheaper than others and that you can sort of

00:37:47.980 make yourself wealthier if your daily expenses are less than they were in another place and so kansas

00:37:53.640 is a place that's just a lot less expensive than big cities in the united states and so i was able to

00:37:58.640 save money but i was also to be close to my family i'm from kansas my sister lives less than two miles

00:38:04.480 from where i'm talking to you right now my parents until recently very lived very close and they still

00:38:08.500 live within a half an hour of me and i actually learned that from travel i realized that of all

00:38:14.160 the values or the commonalities that we see around the world family is a huge one and people make

00:38:19.520 decisions to live near family all over the world and so weirdly enough i had to go away from home to

00:38:25.080 realize how important home was and i think i really identified that kansas part of myself so in addition

00:38:30.540 to saving money by getting land and having a day-to-day life that is much cheaper than if i

00:38:35.280 was in a hip city someplace it allows me to be close to my family in a way that i've seen people in

00:38:40.920 distant lands be close to their family and and really enrich my life in ways that i saw it enriching

00:38:46.180 people's lives in places like africa and asia and europe and south america so it's been a fun

00:38:52.460 dovetailing of sort of enhancing my relationship with my family while also living more cheaply than i would

00:38:58.780 in a more fashionable part of the united states and as you mentioned you you can still find adventure

00:39:03.800 even in kansas like you and your wife went on that trip that walked to the little sweden i think i've

00:39:08.660 seen billboards for that when i'm on i-70 i think yeah absolutely yeah and so i mean we have we've had

00:39:14.980 alistair mcintyre and you talk about him in the book this idea of micro adventures you don't have to

00:39:20.120 travel super long distances to foreign countries to get this experience of travel you can do this in

00:39:25.560 your own state and get a similar experience yeah alistair humphreys is his name actually yeah

00:39:30.620 alistair alistair mcintyre is a philosopher alistair humphreys right yeah no he invented he

00:39:34.780 was he was uh as a as a young guy he had these amazing adventures he like rode across the atlantic

00:39:39.760 and he walked across india and he did these amazing travels in africa but as he had kids and grew older

00:39:45.560 he found that he he sort of redefined his idea of adventure and he realized that when he was at home

00:39:51.860 being a family man he didn't have to cut adventure out of his life if he went out and climbed a tree

00:39:56.420 or if he slept in his backyard or if he went to a pub two towns over and talked to strangers in the

00:40:01.080 same way he did on the other side of the world so i love this concept of micro adventures because

00:40:05.640 it allows you in a very specific way to take that attitude of travel home to say yeah i could go to the

00:40:12.300 movies or the mall or hang out with my friends or stare at my computer this weekend but no i'm going to

00:40:16.980 go on this walk i'm going to drive to a town 50 miles away that i've never been to and experience

00:40:22.500 it for the first time and really embrace that adventurous attitude in a way that i give myself

00:40:27.360 permission to in a distant place but i have i don't always give myself permission to do at home

00:40:32.420 and i think you can see like uh there you can you can experience culture shock even in your own state

00:40:37.060 i've always been struck by this whenever our family travels west we've gone through the panhandle of

00:40:42.880 oklahoma which is just flat i mean it looks kind of like kansas in the western part of kansas super

00:40:48.060 flat you look around and it's just miles and miles and miles of fields and cotton fields and you'll get

00:40:54.300 into these towns um and you go to like to the toot and totem because of what these small towns have

00:40:58.980 and you see the people there and i i can tell like these people they see the world differently than i do

00:41:05.080 even though i'm just four or five hours away from them yeah well having having road trip to the panel

00:41:11.400 before there's a university out there that's like has like 20 national championships in university

00:41:16.740 rodeo do you know what i'm talking about i think i know what you're talking about yeah yeah i i've never

00:41:21.420 stopped there maybe i should but this is just a part of the country that takes pride in being like

00:41:26.240 as alabama is to college football this part i think it's in guyman in oklahoma this little college

00:41:33.280 takes pride in rodeo in a way that some people take pride in football right that's cool

00:41:38.300 and so yeah i think oftentimes the landscape or the culture of a specific place will differ from

00:41:43.960 town to town even even on our walk here in kansas you know every town has a little bit of a different

00:41:48.820 character it has different restaurants and businesses and and attitudes and that can happen

00:41:53.940 anywhere so yeah i think next time i go through the oklahoma panhandle i'm gonna have to investigate

00:41:58.100 this uh national championship rodeo team the thing i want to investigate in kansas is whenever we drive

00:42:03.980 through there i think i don't know if it's like on the way up on i-35 or ice i think might be i-70

00:42:08.540 there's this really tiny tiny town but there's this giant catholic cathedral there do you know

00:42:15.260 what i'm talking about yeah i think it's i think it's the cathedral of the plains there's there's

00:42:19.080 several famous cathedrals here there's a beautiful cathedral in a town called demar which was built by

00:42:24.720 like quebecois french people in the in the 1870s and it's amazing you go in there and it's it's like a

00:42:30.580 junior varsity version of a church you would see in paris right it's architecturally beautiful but

00:42:34.800 it's in this little very underpopulated town in western kansas and you drive less than an hour in

00:42:41.860 the other direction you stop in nicodemus town which nicodemus which was settled by african americans

00:42:47.120 in the 1870s and 1880s and it now has a national landmark there and so yeah yeah actually talking about

00:42:54.720 permission to do things and pretext to stop that's a great way that's a great um pretext to stop i stopped

00:43:00.220 my wife and i stopped in demar kansas to see that cathedral and we walked around the town we found

00:43:05.200 out that the mascot of the high school is called the demartians right the space alien called the

00:43:10.280 demartian and so so it was delightful to to use that as a pretext in that part of kansas also too

00:43:15.900 there's the world's second largest ball of twine in cocker city and there's a little art town called

00:43:20.800 uh called lucas which is sort of the folk art capital of kansas and it's this weird little artsy

00:43:26.500 community that just on this dried up part of the the high plains and that's in one tiny little part

00:43:30.620 of kansas a place i admittedly know pretty well and often as a traveler in distant places i try to

00:43:36.580 remind myself how even a place that doesn't seem like it has much going for it like western kansas

00:43:41.940 can and so if i'm in a boring part of of thailand or south africa or bolivia i remind myself how much

00:43:50.360 there is to see in a place like western kansas and i try to adjust accordingly well rolf this has been

00:43:55.280 a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work they can go to

00:43:59.200 rolfpotts.com it has links to everything all my books and podcasts and articles i've written over

00:44:04.500 the years or go to the local bookstore i try to encourage people to go to their local independent

00:44:08.640 bookstore and you can ask for it there if they don't have it they can order it in but yeah in the

00:44:13.020 online world you can find me at rolfpotts.com and sort of follow the rabbit holes from there

00:44:16.920 fantastic well rolf potts thanks for your time it's been a pleasure good talking to you brett

00:44:20.560 my guest today was rolf potts he's the author of the book the vagabond's way it's available on

00:44:25.080 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about his work at his website

00:44:28.800 rolfpotts.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash vagabond where you find links to

00:44:34.040 resources we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make

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The Art of Manliness - October 05, 2022

The Vagabond Travel Ethos

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