What traveling without a plan taught me about serendipity

A friend recently treated me to a preview of her planned trip to Italy. As we hovered over our cups of tea, she laid out the itinerary in military order – the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, Pompeii, Venice, the Appian Way ... By the time she was done I was exhausted, and I hadn’t even set foot outside the house.

I do wish her bon voyage. It’s just that my method of travel is very different. The extent of my planning is generally to identify a destination and then go there, casting fortune to the wind. This may not be for everybody, but leaping into the unknown, for me, has paid its share of dividends. I attribute it to the thrill of not knowing what lies around the next bend in the road.

The examples are legion. There was Greenland, where I wound up in a small settlement (population 40) without a place to stay. The locals took me in, and I had the singular pleasure of eating supper – fresh salmon from the nearby fjord – with three generations of an Inuit family while they regaled me with fantastic stories one would not find in any guidebook.

A few years back, driving through Iceland on a windswept day, I noticed an older woman sitting by herself at a picnic table by a waterfall. I stopped, approached her, and asked if I could sit with her. She turned out to be a fount of knowledge about the area, which we had all to ourselves, without a tourist in sight.

Wandering in Trinidad, I happened upon a coastal steamer, so I climbed aboard. En route, a young woman noticed the book on my lap and struck up a conversation with me. I was rewarded with a tip I would not have found on my own: a trip to an out-of-the way eatery that catered to the locals – good food at an affordable price, where I was surrounded by the musical patois of the islanders. 

For me, travel, especially international travel, reflects the way I apprehend my own environment here in Maine. Once winter abates and the ice clears from the waterways, I seek out a pond, lake, or river heretofore unknown to me. That’s where I set my canoe, and I begin to paddle with my eyes and ears open, anticipating the hidden cove, the tiny islet, the inviting bend in the river. I don’t want to know anything in advance about popular “highlights” or “must-sees.” Invariably, the highlight turns out to be the unexpected, like the pocket beach I discovered at a remote Maine lake. It was not listed on any map, but the sand was white and the water warm, and I had it all to myself. 

As a teacher, I encourage my students to exercise wanderlust (what a beautiful word). Most of them have never ventured outside the United States, others have not been beyond the borders of New England, and there’s the occasional student who has never left Maine. Sometimes the reason is practical: the expense. But in many cases they express a sense of fear, of going someplace where they won’t know anybody. I try to assuage their anxieties by regaling them with my own travel tales, and the message that there are good people everywhere, and friendships waiting to be kindled. 

Robert Frost’s seminal poem, “The Road Not Taken,” offers timeless wisdom on veering from the beaten path. But I don’t need literary guidance to inspire my travels. I have learned from experience that traveling without a map affords me something no guidebook ever could: the element of surprise, and all the sights, sounds, tastes, and personalities that emerge when one’s obligation is not to check off attractions on a list, but simply to put one foot in front of the other and lean forward.

I once read a piece about regrets that people expressed later in their lives. One that struck me above all others was, “I wish I had taken more chances.” Setting off into the wild blue yonder, with a minimum of planning, does entail taking a chance, but the payoff, for me, has been immense. I align with something British explorer Richard Burton once said: “The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.”