Quotes from Rolf Potts

We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis. —EDWARD ABBEY, DESERT SOLITAIRE

The secret of adventure, then, is not to carefully seek it out but to travel in such a way that it finds you.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN

As Dean MacCannell pointed out, "Anything that is remarked, even little flowers or leaves picked up off the ground and shown to a child, even a shoeshine or gravel pit, anything is potentially an attraction….Sometimes we have official guides and travelogues to assist us in this point. Usually we are on our own. How else do we know another person except as an ensemble of suggestions hollowed out from the universe of possible suggestions? How else do we begin to know the world?

Long-term travel isn't an act of rebellion against society; it's an act of common sense within society.

It's a wonder that we can see these trees and not wonder more.

Quitting—whether a job or a habit—means taking a turn so as to be sure you're still moving in the direction of your dreams.

vagabonding is like a pilgrimage without a specific destination or goal—not a quest for answers so much as a celebration of the questions, an embrace of the ambiguous, and an openness to anything that comes your way.

We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, that allows us to grow. —MARY CATHERINE BATESON, PERIPHERAL VISIONS

Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you, The divine ship sails the divine sea for you. Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid or liquid, You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky, For none more than you are the present and the past, For none more than you is immortality. —WALT WHITMAN, "A SONG OF THE ROLLING EARTH

And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

neither self nor wealth can be measured in terms of what you consume or own. Even

Most people are on the world, not in it—having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate. —JOHN MUIR, THE WILDERNESS WORLD OF JOHN MUIR

On a basic level, there are three general methods to simplifying your life: stopping expansion, reining in your routine, and reducing clutter.

The traveler was active, he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience," Daniel Boorstin opined in 1961. "The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him.

In this way, "seeing" as you travel is somewhat of a spiritual exercise: a process not of seeking interesting surroundings, but of being continually interested in whatever surrounds you.

We see as we are," said

Listen: we are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different! —KURT VONNEGUT, TIMEQUAKE

Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility.

We see as we are," said the Buddha

Traveler, there is no path, paths are made by walking. —ANTONIO MACHADO, CANTARES

Most people are on the world, not in it—having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

The world is a book," goes a saying attributed to Saint Augustine, "and those who do not travel read only one page.

A vacation, after all, merely rewards work. Vagabonding justifies it.