What traveling without a plan taught me about serendipity

Like scores of others, I use the carefree summer months to travel, setting my sights on fresh horizons. But unlike most, I travel without a plan: no map, guidebook, or itinerary. The extent of my planning is to identify a destination and then go there, casting fortune to the wind. Leaping into the unknown, for me, has paid its share of dividends.

Take Greenland, where I wound up in a small settlement without a place to stay. The locals took me in, and I had the singular pleasure of eating supper – fresh salmon from the nearby fjord – with three generations of an Inuit family while they regaled me with fantastic stories one would not find in any guidebook.

Traveling without a map affords me something no guidebook ever could: the element of surprise, and all the sights, sounds, tastes, and personalities that emerge when one’s obligation is not to check off attractions on a list, but simply to put one foot in front of the other and lean forward. 

Setting off into the wild blue yonder does entail taking a chance, but the payoff can be immense.

A friend recently treated me to a preview of her planned trip to Italy. As we hovered over our cups of tea, she laid out the itinerary in military order – the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, Pompeii, Venice, the Appian Way … By the time she was done I was exhausted, and I hadn’t even set foot outside the house.

I do wish her bon voyage. It’s just that my method of travel is very different. The extent of my planning is generally to identify a destination and then go there, casting fortune to the wind. This may not be for everybody, but leaping into the unknown, for me, has paid its share of dividends. I attribute it to the thrill of not knowing what lies around the next bend in the road.

The examples are legion. There was Greenland, where I wound up in a small settlement (population 40) without a place to stay. The locals took me in, and I had the singular pleasure of eating supper – fresh salmon from the nearby fjord – with three generations of an Inuit family while they regaled me with fantastic stories one would not find in any guidebook.

A few years back, driving through Iceland on a windswept day, I noticed an older woman sitting by herself at a picnic table by a waterfall. I stopped, approached her, and asked if I could sit with her. She turned out to be a fount of knowledge about the area, which we had all to ourselves, without a tourist in sight.

Wandering in Trinidad, I happened upon a coastal steamer, so I climbed aboard. En route, a young woman noticed the book on my lap and struck up a conversation with me. I was rewarded with a tip I would not have found on my own: a trip to an out-of-the way eatery that catered to the locals – good food at an affordable price, where I was surrounded by the musical patois of the islanders. 

For me, travel, especially international travel, reflects the way I apprehend my own environment here in Maine. Once winter abates and the ice clears from the waterways, I seek out a pond, lake, or river heretofore unknown to me. That’s where I set my canoe, and I begin to paddle with my eyes and ears open, anticipating the hidden cove, the tiny islet, the inviting bend in the river. I don’t want to know anything in advance about popular “highlights” or “must-sees.” Invariably, the highlight turns out to be the unexpected, like the pocket beach I discovered at a remote Maine lake. It was not listed on any map, but the sand was white and the water warm, and I had it all to myself.