Blogging the adventure: Kendall’s Quest

Some travel blogs begin and end with the departure and return flights of a particular journey. The trip over, the blogging ends. Some bloggers, however, realize midway through their experience that life itself is a journey, and they can’t quite stop writing about it. Kendall’s Quest is about just such an adventurer.

Originally started as a blog for a month-long trip to Portugal in 2006, Kendall found she had much more to say than just the usual “look what I did here” stuff. So she kept writing. And writing. She’s a spiritual traveler, finding meaning in whatever she sees and experiences. She’s an inspiration to her fellow solo female travelers on the BootsnAll boards, and routinely provides great information and encouragement to them and others.

Kendall isn’t a spring chicken anymore, and – as they say – with age comes wisdom. She approaches travel, and seemingly everything she does, with a knowing quality I think younger travelers find appealing. She is still excited about travel, to be sure, but doesn’t get worked up or panicked about things:

What I like best about getting old is the clarity that comes from watching the roller coasters soar and sink for so many years that, while I never lose interest in what will happen next, I am also less likely to expect that whatever is happening now will go on happening. Buddhists call it impermanence. The breath arises and falls away, and that becomes a metaphor…

And now she’s hoping to retire at the end of 2007 and move to a new city. But something tells me “retirement” won’t be anything like a stopping point on this woman’s journey:

Each day I see a little more clearly what a miracle it is to be single, responsible to no one but myself, still relatively healthy and as sane as I’ve ever been, and about to live in some beautiful new place where the necessity to earn a living and provide for other people no longer dominates my life. Scales fall from my eyes. I want to move into a new landscape and touch it, smell it, roll in it, squish it between my fingers, chew on it, drench myself in it, know all its seasons and moods and colors, know it well enough to adore it: I want to move in and grow roots in it and make something, maybe something with my hands, that doesn’t have to be successful, doesn’t have to please anyone, or sell, or meet anyone’s standards but mine.

If that doesn’t sound like a true vagabonder talking, then I don’t know what does.