- Being a Wanderer

Reminder: Florida Presentations

KEY WEST, FLORIDA: March 19, 7:30 p.m. Key West Yacht Club, 2315 North Roosevelt Blvd., Key West, FL, See www.keywestyachtclub.com for more information.

MARATHON, FLORIDA: March 20, noon luncheon meeting, Marathon Yacht Club, 825 33^rd Street, Marathon, FL. See www.marathonyachtclub.com for more information.

Although I believe these events are for members only, both yacht clubs welcome new members.

Here are some of my thoughts about being a wandering sort of traveler, as one is when cruising. These are excerpts from Voice of a Voyage: Rediscovering the World During a Ten-year Circumnavigation .

Most of the words defining someone who has had myriad travels are pejorative: nomad, vagabond, drifter, rolling stone. For those who remember the 1950s in the United States, the term fellow traveler was used to describe Communist sympathizers in the neurotic times of the Cold War, as if being a traveler was quite unacceptable. While fellow traveler meant to belong to a specific ideological group; contrarily, what does it mean to not belong?

Here we are with several other “fellow travelers,” cruisers from various ports of call meeting for a rendezvous in Australia.

Because of this voyage, I no longer felt as though I belonged to a country, although I expected to continue living in the United States. I will vote and be a responsible citizen; but in terms of belonging, I have a different allegiance as a result of my wandering around the world in a sailboat. There are, no doubt, many people on this planet who through travel, displacement, choice, or beliefs have this sense of nonbelonging. Perhaps we could all benefit by having dual citizenship: our home country and the world at large, taking more responsibility for all who inhabit it.

Travel is, as Mark Twain said, “poisonous to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,” but, of course, it is more than that. It takes us out of ourselves and brings us back again—full circle—a circumnavigation of self.