Here is a blog post that struck a note with me – reminding me of myself in my mid-20s when I decided to come home. I still carry a bit of the urge to backpack forever, but I value that “state of affairs  where we can find familiar comforts” (see quotation below).

In “Passing up Paradise in Colombia”, Luke Armstrong  asks “Can a backpack be your home?” He writes…

“I could do it, I thought, I could leave the world behind and stay here. This thought was accompanied by the simultaneous realization that I would not actually do it. It was the very fact that this would all soon end that was giving the thought of staying a wistful value. At some point we all long for home. Home not as a place, but as a state of affairs where we can find familiar comforts and the intersecting lives of loved ones.

Everyone with a lot of time logged on the road has run into those travelers who went further than the mere contemplation of not going home. Travelers who turned month-long trips into lifetimes… Home is wherever my feet are planted, their mantra rings out on beaches and in bars.

… when the party ends and everyone goes home they are left to wander dark streets flanked by windows where no one has left a light on for them.”

Here I am, many years later, comfy in my home but still fascinated by those travelers and wondered what if…

So who wants to check out Uruguay and Chile with me?!  Apparently I’ll need to pay special attention to my opera wear in Montevideo. I don’t think my mink will fit in my backpack, but I can try.