The Audacity of Stories
Part 1
A meditation on travel, the gift of go, and the Gift of Go.
Eagles + brothers/Porteños. Brazil, 2002
“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
- Rumi, These Spiritual Windowshoppers
I. long story short
In early November of 2021, just four months after selling most of our possessions (outdoor gear & 1989 Toyota Bandeirante excepted) and the company that I’d founded in Dallas, Texas when I was 26 years old; three months removed from a joyous 5-week backpacking trip across southern Mexico with our kids; two months after Elisa & I made the decision to come back to Brazil to be closer to family; and just days after the final steps of our first 28-day crossing of the Serra do Espinhaço, Elisa & I made a decision to remain homeless for a little while longer, and to dedicate everything we had to sharing the incredible, untold Story of Brazil with the world.
That was the beginning of Gift of Go’s business model as we know it today, and of “Diamonds/Wild Tales + Lost Trails”, GOGO’s inaugural Collection of Experiences, set in the Espinhaço. It is not, however, the Story of Gift of Go. That Story is much longer, and it starts in Aruba, in 1984, on the day I discovered travel.
Watching Riots. Bolivia, 2001
II.
Why I GO / Early Goings, Part 1
I owe my life to travel, and I’ve always been good at it—not simply to the extent that one can be good at going somewhere, but that one can be good at leaving somewhere else, and that one can accept and embrace all of the rewards & consequences of that process. This last part is, I think, the difference between people who enjoy traveling and people who never stop traveling.
Literally all of my earliest memories took place while traveling: of climbing a palm tree & looking for (literal) buried treasure with my mom in Aruba when I was 3; of sitting on the floor of my grandmother’s mini-van as we passed alongside of the neon lights on Central Ave. in Albuquerque, NM during a whirlwind roadtrip to “Vegas” (you’d be amazed how many of us could fit in that van); of traveling across Texas (again in a mini-van) with my sensei & other, older kids to compete in Tae-kwon-do tournaments when I was 6; of swimming in the Atlantic & making sandcastles with my grandparents at their home in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
I began to write & illustrate first-person stories about traveling & having adventures as soon as I was old enough to hold a pencil. My mom always told me I’d be a writer when I grew up—that I was natural at it. It took me decades to discover that what I really was called to be was an adventurer.
The rich & layered perspective that comes from experiencing foreign realities first-hand—of having witnessed, known, and been touched by so many unique lives in so many different worlds—is, I believe, a gift that my family unknowingly gave to me. I fell in love with the world, and with life, at a young age, and I have never stopped loving it.
Day 1 of an epic. Amsterdam, 1999
Will write more soon!