By Kas­son­dra Cloos, Spe­cial to The Den­ver Post

In the sum­mer of 2019, I packed up my apart­ment in Boul­der and set off to trav­el indef­i­nite­ly. I’d been writ­ing about trav­el for a few years and occa­sion­al­ly I’d meet jour­nal­ists and blog­gers who called them­selves dig­i­tal nomads. Instead of hav­ing a home, they had a suit­case. Instead of book­ing return flights, they always trav­eled onward.

I was fas­ci­nat­ed by this lifestyle. I could do my job from the road, so why not try it? I had a short trip to Japan planned and decid­ed to keep trav­el­ing after­ward. I hopped on a plane a few hours after emp­ty­ing out my apart­ment. Two weeks lat­er, after a brief vis­it to Boul­der, I flew to Mex­i­co for two weeks and then to Colom­bia, where I stayed for three months.

As more of us spend more time work­ing remote­ly, you might be tempt­ed to take your life on the road, too. From my expe­ri­ence, a life of con­stant trav­el is lit­tle more glam­orous than a life at home. The real­i­ty lying just out­side the per­fect frames you see on Insta­gram is that it’s exhaust­ing to con­tin­u­al­ly pack and unpack, and it’s lone­ly to start over in a new city week after week.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t go. Instead of city hop­ping, though, con­sid­er stay­ing longer in few­er places — long enough to find a cafe you love and vis­it more than once. Whether you’re plan­ning a month in Europe (when bor­ders reopen) or a year of hop­ping around the globe, my advice is to give your trav­el breath­ing room.

This year, amid a pan­dem­ic that has ground­ed near­ly every­one, my trav­el has slowed way down. I moved to Lon­don from Mex­i­co City in July, and I’ve tak­en advan­tage of the time dif­fer­ence (sev­en hours ahead of Den­ver) to work at night and spend my days explor­ing the city by foot.

One morn­ing in August, I left my flat at 3:30 a.m. to watch the sun­rise from a hill­top park over­look­ing the Thames. I then spent hours mean­der­ing the streets of Rich­mond, a cor­ner of Lon­don that feels more like a town than a metrop­o­lis. I wan­dered through a patch of for­est and delight­ed in the scent of the earth and the feel of mulch under my feet. I walked until I found Rich­mond Park, a mas­sive green oasis with its own herd of deer, and lay in the grass to read a book.

I was so unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly still, a man walk­ing along the path laughed in sur­prise as he drew near. “You’re a per­son!” he said. “I thought you were a log, off in the dis­tance, but no!” I burst out laugh­ing, too.

The book I had been read­ing was “Notes from a Small Coun­try,” Bill Bryson’s tale of walk­ing all over Great Britain. Inspired, I decid­ed to jour­ney the 11 miles home by foot. I walked along the Thames, through his­toric neigh­bor­hoods and along streets with adorable bou­tiques, cel­e­brat­ing a city reopened after a near­ly two-month lock­down. I rest­ed under a tree at Green Park, with­in strik­ing dis­tance of Buck­ing­ham Palace, and noticed the ends and begin­nings of neigh­bor­hoods where archi­tec­ture styles changed.

It’s no secret that walk­ing is the best way to see a city — I’m not say­ing any­thing Earth-shat­ter­ing here. When you trav­el more slow­ly, by foot instead of by bus, by train instead of by air, you see both less and more. You cov­er few­er miles, but you can see life in greater focus. You become enchant­ed by the dis­plays of cakes in a bak­ery win­dow, mes­mer­ized by two friends play­ing ping pong in a park. You mark a spot on Google Maps that seems per­fect for a return vis­it to watch a sun­rise. With­out tours to rush to and plans to get on with, you find the places that don’t cater to tourists, and you have time to mar­vel at how dif­fer­ent — and sim­i­lar — life is beyond your home bubble.

For me, the joy of trav­el is show­ing up some­where and expe­ri­enc­ing all of it, nev­er feel­ing the need to ask, “what’s next?” or “are we there yet?” because every­thing around me is worth see­ing. I now treat gro­cery stores like muse­ums — what’s on dis­play, what’s pop­u­lar — and always vis­it the local McDonald’s, not because I miss the famil­iar, but because I’m eager to see what’s dif­fer­ent. (It should be a crime that tsuki­mi pie, a fried sweet made of mochi and red bean paste, is only sold at McDonald’s in Japan.) I recent­ly spent a morn­ing mar­veling at all the meat-fla­vored pota­to chips in a gro­cery store in Lon­don. How did “pigs in a blan­ket” and “beef welling­ton” become chip flavors?

The abil­i­ty to return to places has become my favorite part of trav­el­ing more slow­ly. Instead of scram­bling to absorb a city’s high­lights in a sin­gle day before rush­ing on to the next adven­ture, I make time to browse for­eign mag­a­zines at news­stands and sip a cup of tea at a café I might vis­it every day until I become a “reg­u­lar.” Slow trav­el is about get­ting to know a few places real­ly well instead of a lot of places only a lit­tle. It’s about enjoy­ing being here, wher­ev­er “here” is, instead of tick­ing down the min­utes to the next move. And I am cer­tain­ly here for that.

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