Motives of Those Who Wander
Starting with Why
Preamble
You don’t need me to tell you the world can be a dangerous and depressing place. We witness endless acts of violence, greed, ignorance, and destruction unfolding on our screens daily. This helps fuel things like tribalism, cynicism, misanthropy, and fear. We are right to be concerned and cautious about the state of our world. Yet, how much of our fixation on these things depletes our motivation to travel and explore the only planet we’ll ever know? And what might be the downside to not seeing the world for ourselves, and instead ruminating on its ugliness?
Underneath the thin veneer of our “modernized,” sedentary way of life, we are all wanderers. Exploration and discovery are defining features of our collective past and are still integral to us today. The vast majority of us are leading increasingly more isolated lives that are spent gawking at screens filled with all the selected misery that’s fit to print. These are consequential habits we’re developing, probably for the worse. This medium of communication and viewing the world is inherently narrow, often distorted, and devoid of context. I’ve wondered if those who wander—both ancient and modern travelers—might have a more authentic and representative view of our humanity because they are engaged in an activity that lends itself to nuance and perspective-taking, unlike much of our media climate.
Adventures have the remarkable capacity to grant us lessons and insight into the human condition far beyond what our screens can offer. Mark Twain’s words still ring true over a century later:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
Adventure and the lessons from those who wander have much to offer us in times of fear and unrest. Why are only a small sample of us willing to throw ourselves into precarious situations? What prompts someone to climb Everest, jump out of a perfectly good plane to skydive, backpack a long-distance trail, dive deep into the sea, hitchhike across the continent, or move to a different country? What motivates this kind of behavior to take unnecessary risks in a seemingly unsafe world? How might we learn from those who wander so that we too can allow our own forms of adventure to manifest throughout our lives?
By profession, I’ve been an archaeologist for a decade, working throughout the western and southeastern United States. Part of what intrigued me about archaeology was where it might take me and what kind of adventures I might be introduced to. There have been many. My research interests have helped me better understand human movement and adaptation to environments. Recently, I have focused on hunter-gatherer lifeways and how such societies adapted their cultures to withstand risks and promote resilience. In short, I believe resilience has a lot to do with learning how to take calculated risks, venture out into the world beyond our immediate comfort zones, overcome unreasoned fears of one another, and create social networks to come together in more cooperative ways.
While backpacking the Appalachian Trail nearly a decade ago, I began reflecting on the meaning of adventure and the role fear may play in inhibiting our ability and desire to travel and wander. I explore a central set of questions in my forthcoming book: Why do humans yearn for travel and adventure? How does our society either restrict or encourage us to travel and explore? What role do our fears play in our decision-making? How can we learn to better structure adventure into our lives?
Planning to embark on any unpredictable journey fills you with a lot of initial fear and self-doubt. When my partner (now wife) Hilary and I began to research and plan for our excursion, I recall that I first envisioned the Appalachian Trail experience with enthusiastic, albeit nervous and frightful, intensity. My 24-year-old mind repeatedly carried me into ominous ‘what if’ scenarios. What if we get lost? What if we get sick? What do we do about conflicts with others? Should we carry a gun? What if we get seriously injured or even murdered? The real reason I chose to carry a wooden hiking staff with the face of a bearded wizard carved into it and knighted with the trail name ‘Wise Man’ wasn’t so much that I wanted to feel like Gandalf ascending over wintery stone peaks, but that it could double as a whoop-ass stick against unruly bears and rowdy humans if needed.
Before setting off on any major adventure, we can’t help but be both a little ignorant and overly cautious. I’ve come to discover that humans aren’t so good at forecasting likely scenarios, and we often aimlessly direct our minds toward the wildly horrific and implausible. Our perceived fears rarely align with our actual risks. This creates a paradox because we have to experience our adventure before we get a realistic sense of what it’s like.
A month into our journey, the reality of our experience was far beyond anything I could have imagined from the comforting walls of my rural Indiana home. There were indeed many risks and challenges to deal with but none warranted the amount of dread and suspicion I had forecast during the preceding months: flooded rivers had to be strategically crossed; lightning bolts had to be dodged atop mountains; we had to overcome being lost and separated numerous times; dehydration, hunger, exhaustion, and swarms of mosquitoes weakened our morale; and we had to depend on strangers for advice, transportation, and lodging in remote areas. But humans are incredibly innovative, adaptive, and resilient. This was the central thesis of what anthropology had just taught me as an undergrad, but I had to see it and live it for myself with all senses present to fully understand and feel that lesson.
I wondered what would have happened had I let my fears and anxieties get the best of me, stayed home, and not taken a chance on such a wonderful experience—one that would become a defining experience of my life. How often have we all given in to our unwarranted fears only to be plagued later by the disquieting feeling that perhaps we should have gone through with it? How many times have unreasoned fears and anxieties steered our life away from what would otherwise have been a profound adventure of self-discovery, awe, and beauty?
I am glad we chose an adventurous risk over predictable security. There is no way to measure the loss of such a grand experience not ventured. Individual lives cannot be science experiments. We cannot test out different life choices then hit rewind and choose the best life course. Because of this, we often choose the path of least resistance, “Better safe than sorry” we routinely say. What about the inverse adage, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”?
Adventure and the lessons from those who wander have much to offer us in times of fear and unrest. We all possess an adventure untaken, unexplored, unlived. What exactly prevents us from taking part in one of our species’ most ancient and instrumental behaviors—an intoxicating mix of serendipitous wondering and wandering?
What are my motivations for this project?
First, I am here to launch my writing career and promote the publication of my first book An Anthropology of Wandering: How Adventure Can Alleviate a Fearful Culture. I’ve landed on Substack because I sense it to be an especially emergent place in our media ecosystem. Substack has discovered a way to seemingly align the interests of writers and readers with a platform dedicated to nuance, integrity, and valuable content creation.
A second motivation has to do with values. I love stories about humanity and adventure. I want to better understand the context of our humanity and contribute to the discussion on the great discoveries and stories of our time. And I yearn to wander our planet and learn and come to love as much as I can before I die. I want others to crave and chase after those things too because I believe the lessons learned from long exposure to diverse landscapes, cultures, and ideas are profoundly consequential to many aspects of our well-being, interpersonal relationships, and future as a globalizing society.
The answer to why I am starting this project is that I want to encourage us to reflect on travel and adventure, what it means to us, and how to better structure it into our lives. The purpose of my book and this newsletter is to show that adventure and travel are vital components of the human condition and that many of our fears stifle our abilities to venture out into the world. By not seeing the world in direct ways, we may fail to appreciate the diversity of human culture, thought, and perspective and remain locked in ever-narrowing ways of experiencing the world together. I believe that the act of wondering and wandering is the best chance we have to bind humanity together more firmly, vanquish unnecessary apprehensions and prejudices of others, and instill a lasting sense of stewardship for this planet and all its inhabitants. Being out in the world can inoculate us from many negative psychological biases and help liberate us into seeing the vast potential of humanity in more honest and revealing ways.
Like anything new, I anticipate mistakes in the process of growing this project and I welcome insight and constructive feedback from my readers. I want to hear about your adventures as well, e.g., where have you been lately, where will you soon be traveling, and what are the best and worst trips you’ve experienced. Please feel free to contact me at baileyjs08@gmail.com or thosewhowander@substack.com and if you value this work, please like, share, subscribe, and support in a way you deem fair.
Thanks for being a fellow traveler with me through this read. Much more to follow.
Cheers!
-JSB
