The Importance of Roaming

When I was younger, I’d hope on my bike and ride around the neighborhood, going to the mall to play video games in the arcade or to the sports complex to play baseball or to the junior high to play basketball. I’d ride my bike through neighborhoods, my Walkman blaring Nirvana or Soundgarden or Stone Temple Pilots. I’d just roam, no set direction, no set destination. I’d just be.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered that I am a roamer, a person who just wants to be somewhere with nowhere to be. When one roams, one moves about aimlessly, traversing a typically wide area. Roaming seems so grandiose, so life changing, as if I’m like Jules at the end of Pulp Fiction talking about roaming the Earth following the “miracle” he experienced. Yet, it’s not like that. It’s not a traversal of grand spaces, miles upon miles of walking without purpose or direction. Rather, it’s a desire to exist within those spaces, to allow yourself to become part of the spaces.

I think about all of this when I travel. Typically, when I go somewhere, I don’t have a plan about what I want to see and what I want to do, unless I am leading a trip somewhere as I did to France last May. Even during the study travel to France, I incorporated time to roam the cities where we stayed. In Nice, for example, I wandered up a mountain to the Cimetière Israélite, which, unfortunately, was closed on the day I went…