Contrary to popular stereotypes, seeking simplicity doesn't require that you become a monk, a subsistence forager, or a wild-eyed revolutionary. Nor does it mean that you must unconditionally avoid the role of consumer. Rather, simplicity merely requires a bit of personal sacrifice: an adjustment of your habits and routines within consumer society itself.

Indeed, the most vivid travel experiences usually find you by accident, and the qualities that will make you fall in love with a place are rarely the features that took you there.

In reality long-term travel has nothing to do with demographics, age, ideology, income, and everything to do with personal outlook.

Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises.

If you wander with open eyes and simple curiosity, you'll discover a much richer pleasure - the simple feeling of possibility that hums from every direction as you move from place to place.

The secret of adventure, then, is not to carefully seek it out but to travel in such a way that it finds you. To do this, you first need to overcome the protective habits of home and open yourself up to unpredictability. As you begin to practice this openness, you'll quickly discover adventure in the simple reality of a world that defies your expectations. More often than not, you'll discover that “adventure” is a decision after the fact-a way of deciphering an event or an experience that you can't quite explain.

If in doubt, just walk until your day becomes interesting.