Why Blog?
Those who know me must be baffled by the fact that I am choosing to do one of the things I avoid like the plague. Sit still in front of a computer.
This is an explanation to those people and whoever else may have gotten here by spelling “caminante” incorrectly. A bit of who i am, just what the purpose of this blog is, and how I’m justifying time in front of a screen.
My name is Kaleb, and believe in travel. My business card reads “Mochilero, Freedive Instructor, Dog Musher, Deckhand”. I have been on the road, trail, snow, and sea for the last two years, and recognize this as the beginning of a lifetime of adventure.
As this blog progresses, it will be made painfully clear just how much I believe in travel. I returned from my gap year in South America with an entirely new lens in which to see my life and the world around me. It changed me entirely in ways I’ll rant about in great detail in future blog posts. I truly feel that leaving for Peru on October 11th, 2016 was the first page of a story that was worth reading.
It’s safe to say that this first solo travel was the most profound and beneficial experience I have ever had. From isolated Andean mountain hikes in Peru to solo salt-flat crossings in Bolivia and hitchhiking through the rest of South America, I was shown much more than what the views from the Amazon to Patagonia had to offer. For the first time, I was truly in tune with my self. In demanding a state of true solidarity, travel forced me to question everything I was a part of.
In the most opportune time of our lives for self development and exploration (our late teenage years) we are given cards. Cards which can be used to construct our path in this strategy game. This is an extremely exciting and pivotal moment. The issue is that the VAST majority of people being told to play these life-altering cards don’t even have a basic understanding of the game they’re playing. How could they? It is completely beyond me how after 18 years of constant engagement with the full time commitments to family, friends, society, and education one can hope to have even the slightest clue as to who is playing this game.
l know firsthand just how devastating it can be for those who have distracted themselves from asking and confronting fundamental and personal questions to one day wake up and face themselves, understanding that they are not where they want to be, and not understanding how they got there.
One by-product of the western culture we live in (stick with me here) comes in the form of the molding of someone who has been entirely conditioned to look to and live the future instead of right now, which is the only time that exists. This is my definition of anxiety, an almost uniquely first world luxury. This perpetual state of disconnection which those in mine and oncoming generations are experiencing is proven through the highest rates of anxiety, depression, and feelings of isolation ever recorded in first world countries. There are hundreds of factors that go into these results, but I propose that the #1 reason for the state of confusion and suffering seen is due to a lack of self-awareness.
So where does all this this fit in with my blog, and why am I forcing myself to sit in front of this computer screen in the 2nd story of a dog musher’s home in Alaska, two days before I begin my next adventure?
Because I find it all intensely fascinating, and have a personal, invested interest in everything I’ve written. And because I have a proposal for this growing issue.
Travel
Firstly, I want to make clear that there are different types of traveling. To ease into the flow of travel that has the potential to take you where you need to go, there are certain things to incorperate into your travels to make the transition quicker and smoother. Minimalist, extremely tight-budget travel that challenges your mind and body daily with a healthy dose of loss of control and isolation is what should be practiced , and what this blog will preach. The bottom line solution to the problems stated above stems from a realization I came to last year: “The best way to know who you are is to go somewhere nobody does”. In my experience this can be achieved through meditation, legit solo travel, freediving and psychedelic experiences. There are infinite ways to get to similar destinations, but these are the routes and experiences which have done the most to guide me . The reason I push travel over the other alternatives is that I have found it is near impossible to fight and distract yourself from the exploration of your Self when you are more physically and culturally alone than you ever thought possible for months on end (not to be confused with being lonely!). What you walk away with from time spent truly traveling will stay with you longer than any psychedelic journey, and when compounded with the other forms of self-discovery and practiced awareness, you will be more tuned into and engaged with life and yourself than through any other experience.
My main meta, or goal, is to share that which I have come to see through my travels. I know for a fact that you reading my writing does not leave you with anything but empty text, no matter how fluid I write it. I won’t pretend for a second it does. The only way for me to truly show you the remote mountain in Peru that provided me with one of the most valuable lessons of my life and what that lesson is, is for me to help you get to your own remote mountain in some county and have you find it for yourself.
My audience is not the lost and the destitute. It is everyone who is open to the idea of expanding their view on life, investing in themselves, and filling the part of them that lacks substance. Or for those that want to see just how far they can stretch their dollar, or learn more about a place, people, and culture. If I could have an ideal demographic, it would be those weaning out of high school and getting a look at their cards for the first time. To propose an alternate option for how to invest in yourself and play your cards which is not nearly as supported or ingrained into the culture of my country (the United States) as it is others, is something which justifies the pain my attention deficit and hyperactive shaped body and mind feel as I write this.
My content will lay out just how marvelous and exceptionally cheap travel can be (yes, even the broke teenager can get the funds for eight months of traversing an incredible continent within a summer of part time labor). I will share tips I learned from guru travelers, as well as my own time on the road. There will be stories of despair, ultimate suffering, the highest elation, and my most far out encounters with the extremes of life. Photos, guides and informational posts of the most out-of-this-world places I’ve been to, and advice for how to get to them via the most adventurous (cheapest) way possible. That which has helped me get to where I am now will be made available to you. Sure, I am a rather unremarkable, relatively gift-less, poor American who truly believes he knows and has experienced the absolute minimum of what he is obligated to know and experience. But I am entirely stoked on life, fueled with varied purpose, and have found peace, opportunity, and much of my self through travel.
If I can get just one more person to travel, I will know that I have done my part in the betterment of this world. You must be the change you wish to see, and to come away from a true travel experience with anything less than a more opened mind and developed idea of who you are and the world you’re a part of simply is not possible. You will be better off because of it, and thus the world will be as well (and I’ll feel justified in all this)
I suppose this marks the official beginning of Kaminante Kaleb. My beginning updates and website additions are sure to be far an in-between. I have been pinching minutes for the past year of my life, and the spontaneous choice to condemn myself to more time behind a screen (not otherwise engaging in the world) is sure to throw off how I construct my time. Give me some of yours, and I promise I’ll end up putting as much energy into this as I do my actual journaling and writing.
-Kaleb