Tourist vs. Adventurer

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” -G. K. Chesterton

My initial thoughts stem from a conversation that I had the other night with a friend a couple of evenings ago. I was arguing that travelers are lame and that vagabonds/drifters/gypsies/nomads were much better. I mean, come on, they have a cooler name, they have a more adventuresome outlook on life, they’re counter-cultural, and the argument goes on and on. But this is not the case. I formally relinquish the defense of my previous perspective on this particular contention. The term traveler is an umbrella term, used to cover every type of person that moves from Point A to Point B. Thus, gypsies, vagabonds, drifters, and nomads are types of travelers. All gypsies/vagabonds/drifters/nomads are adventurers; but not all travelers are adventurers. After all, there are those dreadful lot that we call tourists. With that, I think that we all can agree on one more thing: tourists suck.

A tourist has a plan. A tourist goes to the Grand Canyon to see the Grand Canyon, the hawks, the sunrise and sunset, to hike a couple short hikes, etc. There’s not much to be said about the tourist. He will have pictures at the end of his trip but his experience is radically different from the traveler, the adventurer.

The traveler is an adventurer. What he sees is his adventure. There are no plans, no agendas, no pretenses, no expectations. Everything that happens is the adventure. The traveler will see the Canyon, the hawks, the sunrise and sunset. But that’s not all he’ll experience. The traveler’s travels are more than what meets the eye. Oh, yes! The traveler experiences the road, feels the Canyon, is the sunset. There is a perfect union between the experiencer and the experienced. In fact, the individual becomes the experience!

Have you ever gone to Colorado with no plan? Have you gone on a date with no idea where you’ll be taken? Have you ever just gotten in a car and drove? Have you closed your eyes but stayed awake for ten minutes? Have you ever seriously tried to pray in silence by yourself to a God? Be honest: have you ever really felt alive?

The more I think about it, the more I think that adventuring is a mind set. I reckon that it's possible to go on a planned adventure. But in order for it to be an adventure you must be willing for the plan to change, adapt to the circumstances, add to, take away from. An adventure is adventuresome only if the adventurer does not constrict himself to an agenda that could potentially jip him out of another adventure.

It all comes down to the fact that a person really just needs to experience life on a minutely basis. Was there a moment today that you were unconscious of what you were doing? Was there a time today when you slipped into a typical pattern? Was there a time today when you were on auto-mode? Was there a time today when you were a zombie that just went through the motions? These are all signs of tourism. Be alive; be an adventurer.