Wow, what an incredible experience these last two months have been. I feel full, grateful, charged. It’s been over six years since I took a trip that lasted longer than 2 weeks. I started my long-term travel lifestyle years ago (16, to be exact). A four month journey to South America primed me for the two year hitchhiking pilgrimage I would take a year later.
Landing in Cartagena after 10 days at sea from Panama. This is the halfway mark of my two year trip through Latin America.
For me, travel is medicine - potent medicine.
Any duration of time on the road is better than none at all. Last year, Amy and I travelled to Iceland for two weeks. Iceland was indeed a powerful, enlightening experience, but by two weeks it felt like we had just gotten into the new groove - and then it was time to go home.
Finding balance in Iceland
Fast forward a year and we found ourselves with an open-ended ticket to the South Pacific and no plan whatsoever. Yes there were motives and intentions which I’ll get into at another point, but there was no timeframe - This trip was all about flow.
Grinning away on our private kayak tour through Tonga
Flow-State travel is a new term for an old way of life. Many people know what it means to fall into the current of synchronicity. Sometimes when we’re open and aware enough, certain potentials appear on the path. People show up with the right advice, the right ride, or the seemingly impossible happens at the most improbable moment. This is Flow State.
Travel transforms the way I look at the world. It challenges my perceptions for a lot of reasons, but mainly because in many ways I’m in survival mode. I’m in a new place, surrounded by a new culture, waking up in a new time zone…you get the idea. Our conscious mind constantly filters out the things that it perceives are unnecessary. Most of us are walking around at half capacity, unaware of a universe teeming with life all around us. But travel forces my mind to let in new information; certain receptors that haven’t sparked in years alert me to new surroundings. With the right attitude and clear intention, amazing things come to light and form.
This medicine is a reminder that this state of being is not dependent on travel. Higher states of awareness are accessible only in the present moment. Whereever and however we travel, it is the present that must be the destination.