That’s it, we’re doing it. Our oldest child Aryk is off at university in England. Our youngest child Gavin has just graduated from high school. Rather than be empty nesters, my husband Bob and I are stepping off the treadmill and hitting the road to spend the next decade or two exploring the planet.
The family in London
Our oldest child Aryk is off at university in England. Our youngest child Gavin has just graduated from high school. Rather than be empty nesters, my husband Bob and I are stepping off the treadmill and hitting the road to spend the next decade or two exploring the planet.
We are relatively young and healthy, and the stock market has done good things with our investments over the last few years. So we are renting out our house just outside Denver, putting our stuff in storage, and packing up a few suitcases, three cats, our daughter (for a gap year) and our musical instruments and heading south of the border to explore Mexico for the next few years. We plan to spend three months at a time in different communities, mixing up cities, mountains, coast and historic pueblos, to really get beyond just a taste of this glorious country.
I know people think we’re crazy. Whenever I tell them the plan, they look at me uncomprehendingly.
Why are we doing this?
Because travel opens your eyes and heart in ways nothing else can.
Because meeting all kinds of different people expands your horizons.
Because learning a new language stretches your mind and keeps your brain supple.
Because settling in one place forever feels limiting.
Because the ocean is beautiful and the mountains are glorious.
Because thanks to social media we can stay connected to old friends and dear communities while we make new friends and create new communities.
Because Mexico has a low cost of living and high quality of life.
Because … salsa and mole sauce.
Because … bougainvillea and pelicans.
Because … waves and reefs.
Because … whales and dolphins.
Because … ruins and festivals.
Because … the Day of the Dead and Three Kings Day.
Because … tequila and mezcal.
When we’re done with Mexico, we plan to move on to Central America and South America.
When we’re done with Central America and South America, we’ll give the cats back to the kids, ditch the truck, fly across the pond (Atlantic Ocean) and begin exploring the rest of the planet.
Because life is short. And the world is big. Join us on the adventure!
I know people who have lived in the same place their whole lives. Most people, I suspect. My high school peers. Friends from childhood. People in my church, who tell me stories of their parents taking them to the same church when they were young. I have one family of seven cousins who have all settled down within 20 miles of their childhood home outside of Harrisburg, PA. I don’t know if any of them has ever journeyed any farther afield than the Jersey Shore – or even wanted to. I often envy their closeness, their sense of community. They are there for each other’s weddings, baby showers, Baptisms, every birthday, every Christmas, every Thanksgiving. They never miss. They know every street in their community like it has been tattooed inside their brains.
But that’s not me. That has NEVER been me.
A nomadic childhood Some of it was by circumstance. The fact is, I never even had a chance to live in one place my entire life. My dad was an accountant for GTE (and various evolutions), so by the time I was born, Number 3 of an eventual eight kids in an Irish/Italian/German/French, very Catholic family, the brood had already moved a couple of times. I started life in Williamsport, PA, my parents’ hometown, but only after they spawned their first couple of kids while living in New Cumberland, PA. We were in Billtown long enough for my parents to have me and my brother Michael before we were on the road again.
Warren, Pennsylvania. Syracuse, New York. Littleton, Massachusetts. Higganum, Connecticut. Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, where I finished high school and went off to Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in South Jersey.
A nomadic adulthood
The first time I made the choice to move, as opposed to being moved, was after I graduated from Glassboro with a degree in mass communications and my parents announced that they were moving again, this time to Vienna, Virginia, outside of Washington, DC. The opportunity to launch my broadcasting career in the Nation’s Capital was so compelling that I went along.
DC was beautiful
I got a job in the news department of WMZQ, a Top 40 country radio station, and then at the Associated Press, which was the largest news organization in the world. As soon as I saved enough to move out of my parents’ house, I moved into DC, and then to Arlington, VA. Living in Washington was a fascinating experience, but I found a culture of pursuit of status and government bureaucracy a bit stultifying and champed at the bit to leave.
Traveling woman I started traveling. I visited San Francisco, England, Scotland, France and Switzerland. I backpacked through the Loire Valley and southern France. I joined the Ski Club of International Journalists and skied in Colorado, Italy and Spain.
Turning point
When I was 30, I decided it was time to pursue work abroad. An opening came up on AP’s World Desk in New York, the news agency’s way station to becoming a foreign correspondent. I considered a stint in New York a necessary evil to reach my goal – it would be crowded and loud, all skyscrapers and their shadows, with no nature in which to recharge. I would hate it.
Instead, I fell in love
I fell in love with Central Park
God, I loved Central Park
From the moment I arrived in NY, I was hooked by that dirty, cacophonous, unpredictable, multicultural, over-the-top, awe-inspiring city. I could almost feel the creative pulse flowing into my body through the soles of my feet the moment they touched the ground at Penn Station. When I went for my first glorious run in Central Park, I almost flopped into the grass on the Great Lawn weeping with joy. Something inside me was opened up. The world got bigger. I got the job, and the Upper West Side of New York became my personal nirvana. Three and a half years later, I was posted to Puerto Rico as a foreign correspondent covering the Caribbean islands. I had finally done it!
But oops, love Alas, love interfered with my “travel the world” dreams in the form of Bob Greenawalt, a fellow adventurer whom I met a few months before I was posted to PR. Bob also had lived in many places, including Germany, while serving as an officer in the US Army. He followed me to Puerto Rico, but there was no work for a high-powered IT consultant on that perennially depressed island. So after a couple of years we returned to NYC, a city we adored that offered employment for us both.
We got married and started a family. The adventure of parenting two gifted, autistic kids kept our feet on the ground for a while.
But after a decade or so in Manhattan and nearby Mamaroneck, the 2008 recession hit and Bob lost his job. We packed up the kids and the cats and headed across the country to the rugged mountains and of Colorado.
And that’s where we’ve been for almost 10 years. We’ve cycled up mountain passes, camped beside lakes, skied down black diamonds, hiked 14ers and drunk our fill of what this state has to offer. But the last kid has graduated from high school, and the next adventure awaits.
Posted by Lisa Hamm-Greenawalt
