"Vagabonding with Rolf Potts," AAA World

10/31/2019

AAA World Article

VAGABONDING WITH ROLF POTTS LEARN MORE ABOUT THE KANSAS TRAVEL WRITER.

By MeLinda Schnyder

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All photos by Fritz Liedtke

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Readers often contact travel writer, essayist and creative writing teacher Rolf Potts to say nice things about all four of his books—including Souvenir, his latest work published in March 2018—but more often, they reach out him to say that Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel has changed their life.

The book, published in 2003 and updated in 2016, is as popular today as it’s ever has been. It’s based on travel experiences that changed Potts’ own life: first traversing the U.S. in a van for eight months and then traveling independently around Asia for two-and-a-half years.

This past fall, we met with Potts over coffee in Wichita, Kansas, where he grew up. Here’s what he shared with us.

AAA World: What is vagabonding?

Rolf Potts: Vagabonding is about taking time off from your normal life to travel the world in earnest, not a two-week vacation but an actual departure from your home life to be able to travel slow and meaningfully in a way that doesn’t break the bank.

In a practical sense, the book is a guide for taking that dream trip that you’ve always thought about. If you’ve dreamt of climbing [Mount] Kilimanjaro, then you should do it. You should put a date on a calendar three years from now and make it happen because you can.

AAAW: You didn’t travel far from home while you were growing up in Kansas, didn’t see the ocean until you were age 15. When did the travel bug bite?

Potts: While I was in college, my grandparents had gotten to retirement age. They’d worked really hard; my grandfather had been farming since he finished eighth grade. And then my grandmother got Alzheimer’s disease and the lost idea that life rewards hard work with free time at the end of it hit me really hard. They weren’t going to be able to travel or even enjoy retirement as my grandmother declined.

I had always dreamed of traveling, and I realized that if I didn’t actively make that happen, it wasn’t just going to be given to me. I started planning then what two-and-a-half years later was my first vagabonding trip, in 1994.

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AAAW: Working as a landscaper in Seattle, Washington, for eight months funded your first vagabonding experience, traveling the U.S. for eight months mostly living out of your van—is that right?

Potts: I was 23 and had just graduated from college, so I had no money. I did [that first vagabonding trip] thinking I would scratch my travel itch and go back to being a responsible American workaholic. But I realized that [travel] wasn’t as hard or dangerous or expensive as I thought it would be. The fears that are tied to travel are worth considering, but they’re rarely as bad as you assume they’ll be.

That trip is where I learned all the important lessons and got over all of the deep-set fears that hold most people back and would have held me back had I not made the decision to do it. I've been doing a variation of it ever since. That doesn't mean I’ve been traveling full time ever since, but I’ve kept that mindset.

AAAW: And you call that mindset ‘time wealth’?

Potts: Despite all our possessions, time is our most important possession. Time wealth is the idea that time is the truest form of wealth that you have in life, and if you’re not spending it in a way that enhances your life, then you should rethink that.

People think that travel preparation involves techniques for rolling your shirts so they take up less space or how to buy a ticket for $15 less, but the most important thing to me is the philosophical justification for doing it and the idea that you don’t have to save $100,000 if  you just shift your priorities a little bit. You can stay at the five-star hotel for $275 a night in top https://kansas.aaa.com/aaaworld/article/?Id=%7B8EF80F79-0FD0-42F0-AA28-FF261F854292%7D&et_cid=JF19_AlongtheWay_VagabondingRolfPotts

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Bangkok or you can stay at a perfectly clean and comfortable place for $10 a night that will have interesting backpackers from Germany and Thai people from the neighborhood hanging out.

AAAW: And that’s a lesson that applies to all parts of life, right?

Potts: The idea is that you should think purposefully about how you spend your time and that creating time is a lot easier than you think. Even if you don’t want to use that time for travel, think about creating more time for your family, more time for your hobbies or whatever you find interesting and enhances your life.

AAAW: What is your advice for someone who wants to travel for an extended time but is frozen by too many ‘what ifs’?

Potts: Do the trip that fits your life, and just soak it up. If all you have time for is six weeks and it scratches your itch or pushes your limits, then that’s just as significant as the person who’s traveling for six years.

I think a lot of older people or less financially flexible people worry too much that they have to be young and completely wide open. [Travel is] easier and cheaper and safer than you think it is, if you allow it to be. People have so much fear in the United States, and it’s not even just fear of terrorism or crime but just fear that they’ll miss something back home. Or fear that they’re being irresponsible or that they won’t be employable again. If you let it, [travel] can enhance your life in all those situations.

And one thing I point out in the book is that you don’t need other people’s permission to do it. Mindset, attitude, philosophy—that’s usually the biggest impediment, more so than the size of your bank account or the ankle support of your boots. The thing that stands in the way is just mindset, willingness to do it.

AAAW: Your newest book, Souvenir, was published for Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, which explores the hidden lives of ordinary things. The premise in your book is that souvenirs from travels are personalized forms of folk storytelling.

Potts: The book has helped people realize they have very specific souvenir habits, and they’re actually pretty excited about it when they stop to think about what it means. If you’ve ever wondered about this compulsion of travel souvenirs or how we use souvenirs to narrate  top our lives, this is a guidebook to help people understand the souvenir ritual. It’s a cultural https://kansas.aaa.com/aaaworld/article/?Id=%7B8EF80F79-0FD0-42F0-AA28-FF261F854292%7D&et_cid=JF19_AlongtheWay_VagabondingRolfPotts

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history of souvenirs that involves philosophy and psychology to explore why we attach meaning to the objects in our travels and, by corollary, the objects in our lives. Little relics and trophies and heirlooms and mementos.

Travel has been made real by collecting things over the years, from back when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1786 and carved off some of Shakespeare’s chair as souvenirs to the growth of the industrial souvenir market starting in the mid-19th century.

The book itself is a souvenir; it’s a small 120-page book.

AAAW: You grew up in Wichita, and though you’ve reported from 60 countries and were based overseas for about seven years, you now live in a rural area of north–central Kansas near your extended family. What keeps you returning to Kansas between travels, and what are some of your favorite places to visit in the state?

Potts: My decision to call Kansas home again grew out of a variety of factors—mainly affordability, proximity to family and deep affection for the state.

My dad was a biology teacher, and I grew up traveling with him to various outdoor and science destinations in Kansas—places like Kanopolis State Park, Konza Prairie, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Cimarron National Grassland, Maxwell Wildlife Refuge, Cheyenne Bottoms, Monument Rocks and the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays. Kansas is usually seen as a landscape tamed by agriculture—and it is, in many places—but I like visiting these wild and beautiful landscapes as well. I grew up in Wichita and like going back for its restaurants, nightlife, sports and to see my friends. I enjoy visiting Lawrence for the same reasons.

Visit rolfpotts.com (http://rolfpotts.com) to follow Potts’ adventures, read his monthly interviews with travel writers and hear his podcasts.

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2019 issue of AAA World

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