LOCAL>> Rolf Potts – The Vagabond's Way

In conversation with Ernest White II

Thought-provoking reflections on the power of travel to transform our daily lives—from the iconoclastic travel writer, scholar, and author of Vagabonding

For readers who dream of travel, yearn to get back out on the road, or want to enrich a journey they’re currently on, The Vagabond’s Way explores and celebrates the life-altering essence of travel.

Each day of the year features a one-page meditation on an aspect of the journey, anchored by words of wisdom from a variety of thinkers—from Stoic philosopher Seneca and poet Maya Angelou to Trappist monk Thomas Merton and Grover from Sesame Street.

Throughout the year, Rolf Potts embraces the ragged-edged, harder-to-quantify aspects of travel that inevitably change travelers’ lives for the better, in unexpected ways. The book’s various sections mirror the phases of a trip, including:

• dreaming and planning the journey: “All life-affecting journeys—and the unexpected wonders they promise—become real the moment you decide they will happen.”
• embracing the rhythms of the journey: “The most poignant experiences on the road occur in those quiet moments when we recognize beauty in the ordinary.”
• finding richer travel experiences: “Developing an instinct to venture beyond the obvious on the road allows you to see places as mysteries to be investigated.”
• expanding your comfort zone: “No moment of instant gratification can compare to savoring an experience that has been earned by enduring the adversity that comes with it.”

The Vagabond’s Way encourages you to sustain the mindset of a journey, even when you aren’t able to travel, and affirms that travel is as much a way of being as it is an act of movement.

Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. His adventures have taken him to six continents, and he has reported from more than sixty countries for National Geographic Traveler, The New Yorker, Slate, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Sports Illustrated, and the Travel Channel. Rolf’s stories have appeared in numerous literary anthologies, and more than twenty of his essays have been selected as “Notable Mentions” in The Best American Essays, The Best American Non-Required Reading, and The Best American Travel Writing. He is based in north-central Kansas, where he keeps a small farmhouse on thirty acres with his wife, Kansas-born actress Kristen Bush.

Ernest White II is a producer, journalist, and keynote speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Presidio Pictures, and executive producer and host of award-winning television travel docu-series Fly Brother with Ernest White II, currently airing in the United States on PBS stations and Create TV nationwide, and streaming worldwide at PBS.org and Revry.