ABOUT
I still remember the day that my father gave me the words of advice that would alter my life. I was 22 years old, and recipient of a freshly minted college degree. My life was on a track: one year in the workforce beefing up my resume and then on to law school. My father sat me down and told me, "do your future-self a favor, spend one year doing something that you'll never be able to do again when you become a lawyer." I decided the advice was practical and pragmatic. However, when your life is on a track it is hard to imagine what other options are beyond your field of vision. It wasn't until I received the big beautiful annual trip catalog from Backroads Travel did I realize how I wanted to spend my "year off". Working in travel.
My wanderlust began as a hobby, a means to check things off my list. I even had a map that I would stick little red pushpins into when I returned home from my travels. It became more of a game than a transformative experience. "Seen it. Done it. Got the t-shirt." As my travel odometer ticked upward I started to develop a greater respect for the journey.
Travel became my evidence that humans have an innate need to belong and connect to something. When we travel we make an attempt to give our own life context, and find proof that life exists and has existed outside of our own. As Nietzsche suggests, I gain happiness knowing that I can "gaze at old buildings and feel the happiness of knowing that life is not accidental and arbitrary but grown out of a past as its heir...and that existence is excused and indeed justified.”
My years in the travel industry have provided me with invaluable experience in leadership, customer experience and has developed me into a master of empathy. Travel has kept me up at night as the guttural booms of a lion shook my tent. It's pushed me to the edge of my comfortability and even made me cry as I witness(ed) some of the atrocities that humans inflict(ed) upon each other. Travel is a right and a privilege and must be approached accordingly.
There have been times when I wondered what my life would have been like if I went ahead and got my J.D. Then I look at a photograph I snapped or a memento I bought from a humble vendor and the thoughts of what could have been don't really seem to matter.
_nick