Motives of Those Who Wander Revisited: Expanding on Why

After a year of writing on Substack, I reflect on my motivations for my project and the values and beliefs that encourage me to venture onward.

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A year ago, I launched Those Who Wander on Substack—a rekindled version of an adventure blog about the Appalachian Trail and the meaning of adventure in society. My debut post Motives of Those Who Wander: Starting with Why laid out the underlying reasons behind my nascent project. Thus, I wanted the first official post of my second year to revisit and reassert those motives and explain why I’m continuing to venture onward.

Those Who Wander and my forthcoming book An Anthropology of Wandering: How Adventure Can Alleviate a Fearful Culture are designed to investigate core anthropological questions of why we travel and seek adventure and what are the benefits and challenges of doing so. While my book is an exploration of our relationship with travel and adventure and a meditation on the role our fears, uncertainties, and insecurities often play in preventing us from seeing the deeper elements of our humanity and our world, Those Who Wander covers a broader range of topics related to anthropology, archaeology, and existential philosophy surrounding the general theme of travel and adventure. Thus, I aim to assemble this self-described “anthropology of wandering” to more comprehensively see who we are as a species through the lens of travel and adventure—why and how we’ve wandered over time and space.

In my initial post, I questioned what the combined role of intensified media consumption mixed with our lack of travel and adventure may be doing to us and “what might be the downside to not seeing the world for ourselves, and instead ruminating on its ugliness?” If you’ve been following my writing journey so far, you will have noticed that I am deeply concerned about our individual and collective well-being. I have wondered how we might benefit from incorporating more travel and adventure into the structure of our lives and society. Suffice it to say, I believe travel and adventure present unique opportunities to enhance our lives in unimagined and underappreciated ways. As I stated,

“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.”

While I remain skeptical that the stakes are so much higher than they’ve ever been in human history for society’s continuity, I do think the stakes are exceptionally high for our mental, physical, and social well-being as humans living the kinds of lifestyles we do today. As great and promising as technology is, there are core elements to our well-being that technology will never be able to fix for us. For instance, how we come to terms with a world we know deep down is less than ideal takes personal mental work and training. Seeing our world for what it truly is versus what we think it should be is one of our greatest existential challenges. I believe learning how best to observe and engage with the reality of this world happens with more of us being present with all our senses in a variety of social and cultural contexts. Traveling and adventure can alleviate a lot of our fears and unrest and offer us some important and often overlooked benefits. However, we must cultivate a value for these things, invest in them, and have the courage to keep wandering in a world that appears all but discovered and ripping at the seams.

My primary motives remain intact. While I am here to build an audience and promote my forthcoming book, I am ultimately driven by my deep conviction that travel and adventure can alleviate much of our personal anxieties and societal unrest. To reiterate,

“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.”

To see the world and humanity in more honest and revealing ways. That is the powerful essence of what we can achieve through wandering and what motivates me to venture onward both in my personal travels and in my writing. I look forward to sharing more of my writing with you all and expanding on what I’ve coined the “anthropology of wandering”. To another year of Those Who Wander!

Thanks for being a fellow traveler with me through this read. Please consider subscribing, sharing, and supporting this project—much more to follow.

Cheers!

-JSB