Tag Archives: youth hostel

Unschooling in the Art of Travel

One of the lessons I learned from my dad was never stated in so many words, but I like to frame it as follows…

Life, at its best, is a series of adventures; not always successful, not always happy endings, but compelling narratives worth living, sharing with others and spurring our fullest development.

Continuing my series on the key unschooling threads in my young life, I share some of my key developmental travel adventures, which were mostly endeavors engaged in outside of any classroom, school or other formal learning situation. Yet they were some of my most important developmental experiences, giving me a useful orientation along with a sense of agency that I have taken into my adult life, more significant to the person I’ve become than anything I learned in school.

With the wrong mindset, travel can be cast as an arduous logistical chore, long dull hours in a seat, or the discomfort of unfamiliar food, people or circumstances. But when traveling is cast in the light of adventure, I think it can be the greatest of experiences, particularly for kids. If life is a journey, then a trip to somewhere else can be a microcosm of life’s journey, a metaphorical education on perhaps how better to lead one’s life.

This is quite a long autobiographical piece (over 8000 words) weaving together a handful of pieces I have written previously in order to capture an important unschooling thread in my young life that has had a profound impact on who I was able to become as an adult.

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A Very Long Day

My European Backpacking Trip ID
My (mostly) solo ten-week backpacking trip through Europe in the fall of 1973 (at age 18) was an adventure, not always happy, not always fun, but a compelling developmental journey. One memorable day began before sunrise in Trier Germany and ended finally at 4am the next morning in Brussels Belgium, with four cities and six trains in between. Continue reading →