Ten Years a Nomad

by Matthew Kepnes

  I brought the awkward nerdy voice in my head to college with me, so it didn’t matter how good my grades were, how much better my friends were. I still didn’t feel like I fit in. College was supposed to be a fresh start, but it never felt as if I was making much progress at creating a new, better me. There had been three other Matts in my residence hall, and I was the shortest out of all three (one was a basketball player). Suddenly, on the first day no less, I was known as “Mini-Matt.” That’s not a name you ever—ever—want to have. It was like a video game where you mess up early and know immediately that the whole rest of your turn is fucked. Better to just die and start over. My chance to reimagine my life was gone before I ever had a chance.

  As freshman year ended, I hit the reset button and transferred to another school. If I could just go somewhere new, I thought, somewhere with fewer Matts, I could start again and define myself before others defined me. That would solve all my problems. All I needed was a fresh start and then I’d be able to write my own story from page one.

  New clothes. New haircut. New me. I am THE Matt here.

  At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I joined a fraternity, became social chair, developed a large network of friends, started dating, and grew into my own skin. People just called me Matt. I learned to fake confidence. But faking confidence is different from owning it. Faking it didn’t get rid of the kid who felt like he looked like somebody’s younger brother. The one people didn’t really want to hang out with. The runt. Now, in a room four thousand miles from home, with a roommate I didn’t choose, I worried the next ten days was going to be high school and college (tries one and two) all over again.

  Patterns like this are hard to break. We’re afraid of being hurt so we don’t let anyone get close enough to hurt us. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was my first chance to connect with a fellow traveler, to meet someone new on the road, and already I was fitting him into the old patterns of my life. Before we even exchanged a word, I was processing him through a lens colored by fear, anxiety, and rejection. It was, I understand now, the way I reacted to most new people. How long until they saw through my thin veneer of self-confidence? How long until they discovered the nerd underneath?

  At the same time, the experience of transferring to a new college gave me a different pattern. I could, if I wanted to, write my own story. After all, nobody on this trip knew me. Of course, travel isn’t like going to a new college. Much less is familiar. Much more is uncomfortable. And because there are so many fewer points of reference from your old life, you have that much more freedom in crafting a new one.

  The unfamiliarity of travel jolts you out of your familiar patterns. Who we are on the road is different from who we are at home. I don’t know if who we are on the road is closer to our real self than who we are at home—having changed so much in my life, I’m not sure if the idea of a real self is all that useful, honestly. But I can say that being on the road gave me the opportunity to stop faking confidence and start building it; to stop acting like a new person and to start becoming one.

  * * *

  IN COSTA RICA, I could create my own story free from the baggage of home. I didn’t know anyone’s past. They didn’t know mine. Our lives back home didn’t matter. No one cared. All that mattered was how we acted then and there.

  And, if it didn’t work out? Who cared! I’d never see these people again anyways!

  We all have an image of our ideal self in our minds. From the person who is a musical genius or can command an audience to the person who runs every day, tells witty jokes, reads a lot, or walks with confidence. In our minds, that ideal self is just being held back by the version of us who exists in everyday life. The one who justifies and rationalizes why you aren’t your ideal self and why you keep failing.

  But in Costa Rica, those justifications and rationalizations melted away. I had a blank slate to be whoever I wanted. I could be the ideal funny me. I could wake up and say to myself, “What would funny, confident Matt do?” without worrying if people would go, “Hey that’s not the real you!” No one knew the real me. No one knew my shyness. My nerdiness. My insecurities. They just knew the now me, and as long as he was up for anything and didn’t act like a jerk, my fellow travelers were more than ready to start new friendships. Because they were in the exact same place I was—experimenting with their new selves, their fun, outgoing travel selves.

  Funny, confident Matt took his first big swing when the group moved to Arenal, a small town in central Costa Rica renowned for its lake, hot springs, caving, a gigantic waterfall, and a volcano of the same name. At breakfast one morning, I asked two of the women in our group if they wanted to go hiking after lunch. I was not a hiker. I was not the kind of person who walked up to two strangers, even if we had become friendly over the prior week, and asked them to do anything, let alone hike. To my surprise, they said yes.

  Later that afternoon, we took a taxi to the entrance of Arenal Volcano National Park and headed into the jungle, which often quickly thinned out to rocky trails spreading out like spider veins from the side of the mountains. These were remnants of eruptions long past. We wandered off trail and down gravel paths, seeing where they led for the sake of the discovery itself. I felt like Indiana Jones. I jumped over rocks and climbed boulders, got my new friends to take photos of me, followed unknown local birds as they flew around, and, eventually, got us very lost.

  We wanted to reach the lake on the western side of the volcano in time for sunset, and nothing on our map was helping us find our way there. In my defense, the trail map our hotel provided was simple and very vague. It showed the “official” trail, but its many nameless tributaries were poorly marked—if they were even marked at all. Most of the time we weren’t even totally sure which trail we were on. Funny, confident Matt told himself this was all part of the fun of new travel adventures. Which it was, until the sun started to set.

  Every trail we took, every bit of direction we got from hikers we passed seemed just to send us deeper into the forested slopes of the volcano. We went down trails that ended abruptly. We doubled back, found new trails, and the best we could do was go around in circles. As the sky turned a deep pink overhead, and day turned into night, mosquitoes began to hunt us by the scent of our sweat and animals came out of the brush to scavenge, no longer scared off by a thousand hiking tourists.

  Then our flashlights died. In the creeping darkness, the three of us took turns using the light from our camera screens to illuminate our crappy map and divine the way back to the main road. With each false start my anxiety spiked and the trepidation within the group increased. I don’t remember who figured it out, or how, but finally we found our way to a dirt road that connected to the main highway. Roads meant cars. Cars meant people. People meant a way back.

  When we got to the highway, it was empty. There were no cars. Tired and hungry, we began the long walk back to the hotel in silence. The whole way I worried that these two kind, trusting women would never talk to me again. Thankfully, before I could go too far down this spiral, a car appeared over the ridge behind us and slowed to a crawl when the driver spotted us along the side of the road. He stopped and asked if we needed a lift. Without a second thought, the three of us piled into the backseat. A week before I had been uncertain of how to get from the airport to the hotel, I had been terrified to get into anything that wasn’t an officially sanctioned tour bus and now I was hitchhiking.

  As the driver pulled away, each of us turned to look at the mountain and watch it glow red as lava oozed down the side. It was the first moment in hours that any of us had stopped to appreciate the beauty that had brought us out on this hike in the first place. It was other-worldly. Instantly, our mood lifted. I’d had more excitement in half a day than I’d had in my entire life up to that point. And even more, I had a story. We had a story. A shared experience. One that bound us as travelers.

  * * *

  IN MY LIFE BACK HOME, I could plan out my days months in advance. I
knew where every week would take me. There was no mystery, no “what’s around the next bend?” I’d wake up, get ready for work, commute, work, take a lunch, work again, commute home, make dinner, watch TV, vow to finally hit the gym tomorrow, and repeat for five days. There was little variation to that—maybe a happy hour, movie, or dinner here or there. On weekends, I ran errands.

  Costa Rica was the opposite. Every day was unplanned, exciting, and adventurous. I was doing anything I wanted, making friends from around the world, and pushing myself to the limit. It was liberating. There was no judging. No baggage. Nothing I did before I came on the tour mattered—all that mattered was living in the moment with these new friends. After Arenal, we hiked more mountains, saw dolphins, ziplined, came up close to wildlife, went caving, explored tropical jungles. I took part in every activity. No opportunity was wasted.

  Costa Rica showed me a world without commutes or days that blended seamlessly together, days when you didn’t wear shoes for hours at a time, where you talked to strangers and got lost. Every day was so different I sometimes wondered if I hadn’t lived three lifetimes by the time I fell asleep in bed. Days seemed to stretch endlessly and warp my perception of time. We did so much that places we visited the day before felt like they were years ago. Time did not drag like at home but slowed down to let so much happen that it stretched endlessly.

  It stood in sharp contrast to the routine-filled life I had come to know back home. Now, I had seen a world where routine didn’t have to exist. That was the beauty of travel. Now I saw why people loved to go on vacation and always talked so highly of their trips to strange, far-off places. You could break free from everything! I was breaking free from my routine, but also from the version of myself I had grown tired of and the assumptions about what kind of person I had to be. For the first time, I felt like I was in the driver’s seat of my own life. I was the person I always thought I could be. I finally got it.

  I was addicted to the high.

  I wanted more.

  2

  Taking the Leap

  The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.

  —G. K. CHESTERTON

  THE PLANE TOUCHED DOWN in Boston without incident. I followed the signs to baggage claim, listened to the announcements over the PA system (“safety is everyone’s concern”). Everything was in English. Everything was legible, familiar, easy.

  I was home.

  It was as if I could feel my senses fading back to their ordinary dullness, my body and mind preparing itself for more cycles of the endless routine. It was amazing how quickly it all happened. By the time I got into my roommate’s car, Costa Rica was a memory and the force of decades of habit reasserted itself.

  I unlocked my apartment, flipped on the lights, opened the windows to air the place out. This is where I sit on the couch. This is where I have hot showers. This is where I go to sleep and wake up to start all over again. It was like in Fight Club, “I loved every stick of furniture in that place.” I had painstakingly picked out every piece of it from Ikea, and now I was repulsed by the sight of them. If I closed my eyes, I could see the cycle going around and around, spinning out for months and years into the future. And, like a counterweight to all that weight of anticipated routine, I found myself thinking—in the shower, on my commute, at my desk, on the couch I had assembled myself—of elsewhere.

  This mythical place became the focus of all my desires. Elsewhere was anywhere but answering the office phone, filling out paperwork, restocking shelves, or staring at my computer. It was a place of foreign lands and cultures, of laughing with new friends in cafés, of hiking, discovery, freedom, and unencumbered possibility.

  It was one thing to spend my time entering data into spreadsheets before I knew that there was something better out there, but now that Costa Rica had awakened this new desire in me, it became much harder to persist through the drudgery.

  Whereas before I was asleep, now I was awake.

  Now that I knew there was somewhere else where other somebodies lived—or at least spent way more than a week’s vacation—getting to that place was all I really wanted to think about. Elsewhere.

  That was where I belonged.

  In the space of a few short weeks, the corporate ladder that I was supposed to be thankful for having a place (at the bottom) on had turned into a StairMaster. A machine that went in an endless loop, and could actually make you stronger if you let it, but only at one thing: staying on the machine for longer and longer stretches.

  Awakening to the idea that you belong somewhere else is a recipe for wanderlust. It’s also how you become really crappy at your job and look for ways to get the hell out of there as soon as you can.

  A better world was out there—and I had to get there fast.

  During my downtime at work, I daydreamed. I researched trips. I read travel books. I kept myself visually elsewhere as I watched my holiday time slowly accrue back up. I ticked down the months until the calendar would change again and I could race out of the office and toward a plane like a kid on the last day of school.

  * * *

  IN 2005, as soon as the year ticked over and I could take another vacation, I found a friend, picked a place, and left as soon as possible.

  The friend was Scott, the place was Bangkok (to start), and our departure was January. Early January.

  My elsewhere had arrived.

  Thailand was going to be different than Costa Rica. There would be no guided tours in Thailand. No resorts. No prechosen roommates. Elsewhere couldn’t be purchased in a package like that.

  I had done the tour thing and felt, with a friend, I could easily travel unaided by a guide. I had cut my chops. I was ready to go pro.

  On our first morning in Bangkok, we decided to hire a boat to take us up and down the Chao Phraya River. We wanted to check out one of the floating markets that, according to the internet, Southeast Asian river cities were famous for.

  Simple enough. Until we got into a taxi outside our hotel. First and foremost, the taxis in Bangkok didn’t have meters—which meant we were at the mercy of the driver and whatever price he felt like naming at the end of the trip. And when he overheard what we were planning for the day, we were at his mercy once more because he took matters into his own hands and drove us to his friend who he promised would offer us a “great deal” on a river cruise—floating market included.

  If there was a great deal to be had, we weren’t the beneficiaries of it. The floating market we were taken to wasn’t really a market at all. It was a tourist trap, populated by nothing more than a few locals selling trinkets to people like me. Scott and I sat there being badgered by vendors for what seemed like an eternity, locked in a stalemate with our boatman who wanted us to buy something and who we wanted to keep going. Finally, after seeing we would buy nothing, he blinked, and turned the boat around.

  Back ashore, feeling down from our first failed attempt at independent travel, we followed the guidebook to the Grand Palace, the former residence of the royal family. Though no longer used except for royal ceremonies and state visits, the palace was the main tourist attraction in the city with its numerous temples, statues, reliefs, and buildings. We came upon the palace’s large walls that hid all but the top of the magnificent temples that loomed within.

  Yet there wasn’t a soul around, and the giant doors in front of us were closed.

  “It’s closed for lunch. It will open again at 2:00 PM,” said a Thai guy strolling over to us. “I can take you to some other temples in the meantime. Cheap price!”

  Scott and I were still wary from the boat scam, but with the Grand Palace doors shut and no one else around, going somewhere seemed like a better option than just sitting there and going nowhere.

  We got in the man’s tuk-tuk and sped down a side street and into traffic. Cars were at a standstill in traffic, but motorbikes weaved in and out of them, while the tuk-tuks cut off both trying to
change lines. The stop-and-start of it all allowed us to take in a part of the city we hadn’t seen yet. The sidewalks were filled with vendors and food stalls that overflowed into traffic, there was trash littering the road, and an odor that I didn’t know pollution could have. It was an assault on all the senses—including common sense. Something didn’t feel right. I opened up my guidebook and found a section on temple tour scams. Fuck. We did it again.

  Looking up at driver, I told him “No shops. We just want to visit the temples.”

  “Yes,” he said smiling into the rearview mirror. “Only temples! No shopping!”

  But of course he took us shopping—exactly as our book said he would, and exactly as we could have predicted if either of us had bothered to read it on the plane. Every temple he did take us to (and he took us to quite a few), was always just around the corner from some shop he knew. First, there was a gem shop (just a quick look he said), then the souvenir shop, and then a suit shop.

  I was able to stay strong, but Scott finally gave in and bought a suit. Once the transaction was complete, our tour abruptly ended. I realized in retrospect, the whole thing was much more scripted than serendipitous—the shops hired our driver to bring in unwitting Western customers, who were much more likely to be enticed by promises of a “temple tour” than a “shopping trip nobody asked for.” Once a mark bought something—and that’s exactly what we were, marks—he made his money and he was done with us.

  We piled into the man’s tuk-tuk and he drove us straight back to the Grand Palace. There would be no other palaces or temples on this “tour.”