Interview: Rolf Potts
Travel Writer & Vagabonding Guru

By Nana Chen - At 34, Rolf Potts, the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, has wandered through forty-five states and fifty-five countries. It all started a decade ago when Rolf graduated from university. He and a group of college friends bought a Volkswagen bus and traveled for the next eight months. Rolf was never the same after that adventure.

Rolf Potts

He wanted to integrate travel into his daily life; he was no longer content with the annual two-week sprint to a destination and back. Rolf had a hunch there was more to life than that. And he was right. The Wichita native left the prairies and discovered the love of his life, travel, and the ideal means to support it.

Settling in Pusan, Korea for two years, the young Rolf immersed himself in a rigorous routine of reading and writing while teaching ESL. The pay was generous and afforded him the time to consider writing as a profession. He tucked away $20,000, and published a few articles with Salon.com. Don George, Salon.com’s travel editor at the time, assigned Rolf to cover the filming of “The Beach” at a southern Thai island, where he’d be traveling.

What followed went beyond the expectation of Rolf and George. The essay was so well written it made the cover. Rolf was subsequently offered a travel column on Salon.com. And with his website RolfPotts.com set up, Rolf received a warm welcome into the travel writing profession, becoming one of the most respected travel writers today. The young writer, known for his candid speech and thoughtfulness, shared a few moments with us through email.

Nana: Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and Paul Thoreau are frequently quoted throughout your book Vagabonding. Could you please tell us what literature you read growing up, and in what way those voices influenced you?

Rolf: My parents are teachers, so I read a little bit of everything growing up. My dad is a naturalist and a science teacher, so I had access to Henry David Thoreau at an early age—and Edward Abbey and Annie Dillard as well. Walt Whitman I discovered in high school and college, but I didn't realize the true power of his words until I was out on the road and traveling. I remember buying a copy of Leaves of Grass in Missoula, Montana when I was traveling the USA in 1994, and what an epiphany it was to read "Song of the Open Road" aloud as my friends and I drove to Glacier National Park. I was hooked, and I kept that book with me when I went to Korea. I read Whitman's poems from cover to cover, and they have informed the way I think and live.

Nana: You cite two people as your teachers, George D. Potts and the late John Fredin. Please tell us what roles these two men had/have in your life and what it was about their lives that you admire?

Rolf: George Potts is my father, and he's always encouraged me to dream and explore and ask questions. He taught me that your important life priorities aren't always the same as the priorities society is always trying to impose upon you. I learned from him to focus on the important things in life, yet be humble and not take yourself too seriously.

Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts

John Fredin was my high school English teacher. He was an old Wyoming cowboy and Korean War vet who eventually settled down to teach in Kansas. He drank, smoked, and read voraciously, and he was an excellent teacher. In addition to demanding excellence from his students' writing, he made us question where we were going in life. He encouraged us to not put off our dreams for a later date, but instead to seek them out while we were young. After high school and college, he remained a friend, and he gave me some valuable advice and encouragement when I needed it the most. And he could make a mean martini. I just wish he could have lived to see my book come out.

Nana: You teach travel writing in Paris in the summers. Can you please tell us a bit about this?

Rolf: I teach a month-long creative writing workshop at the Paris American Academy each July. I teach travel writing, but also creative nonfiction in general, as well as fiction. Other classes (from other teachers) are available in screenwriting, journal writing, and short form. Class size is limited to twenty students each summer, and we all live and work in Paris. It's always an incredibly inspiring experience, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in writing, or who wants to improve their writing for publication or personal edification. For more information, visit http://rolfpotts.com/paris/

Nana: How are you able to keep things balanced between your love life and traveling?

Rolf: I tend to mix the two. Traveling is actually a very romantic activity—the sad part being that few relationships last very long. I've tried to maintain longer-term relationships, but it's not always easy. I'd imagine I'll eventually get married, but it's not something I see myself doing anytime soon. My true love is travel, for now.

Nana: Do you find travel writing more rewarding than, say, fiction writing, since you are living real situations, not fantasy?

Rolf: I've always been attracted to travel writing and nonfiction in general, since it draws directly on life itself. Plus it puts one in the mindset of living one's life as if it were a story. So for the past eight years I've been concentrating on nonfiction, though recently I have gone back to writing some short fiction, because fiction allows one liberties not available in nonfiction. And I find that my fiction is travel-based, and tends to take situations and characters into directions not possible were I abiding by the parameters of nonfiction.

Nana: How many books on average do you read in a month? How are you able to balance writing, traveling and reading?

Rolf: I read about 2-6 books a month, plus several magazines, and online readings such as Arts and Letters Daily. When I'm writing, I tend to read less. As for the balance, it's very difficult. I think I strike the best balance when I am traveling solo for months at a time—this allows me to immerse myself in a place through experience and reading, and write while it's still fresh. Outside of this context, this can be tough, since I tend to be a bit obsessive. For example, if I'm obsessing on reading, I will often read books at the expense of actually writing my stories. If I am deep into my writing, I find that I don't read because it will throw me off.

Nana: How has your idea of home changed after traveling for so many years? Can you imagine settling somewhere to build a more permanent base?

Rolf: It's funny that you ask this, because the idea of "home" is something that has dogged me for years—it has finally been solved, in a way, this year when I went in with my family on thirty acres of ranch land in Kansas (where, unlike the US coasts, property is still cheap). There is a small house on the property that I've been fixing up as my USA office (I have paint on my hands from remodeling as I type this). Thus, while I don't see myself living in Kansas for more than a couple months a year, the house and ranch will give me a place to put my books and clothes and photos—a place to return so I can work or relax or be close to my family. And this development has lessened my anxieties and issues about "home" quite a bit. We'll have to see how this works after a couple years of doing it. Ideally I would travel most of the year, wintering in places like Asia or South America, and spending the fall or spring on my ranch in Kansas. We'll see.

Nana: Are there travel experiences, which make you “road weary,” or can you imagine getting tired of traveling one day, wanting the same bed for an extended amount of time?

Rolf: Not really. My decision to get the ranch in Kansas is more the result of wanting a psychic "center" than it is the result of being road weary. Granted, there are indeed times when I get tired of certain travel situations—but one advantage of vagabonding is that it allows you to go in new directions. If I get tired of a certain travel situation, I can always settle down in one place for a while, or go someplace new.

Nana: When you set off to travel after two years in Korea, what sort of timeframe did you have in mind? How did you plot your route and what route did you take?

Rolf: I thought I'd be on the road for about a year—although it turned out to be two and a half years, thanks to the fact that my money took me further than I'd hoped (that, and I was making a little extra money from travel writing). My initial plan was to spend the whole year in SE Asia, China, Russia, Europe, and perhaps part of the Middle East. As it happened, the travel experiences were much richer and denser than I'd planned. Hence, in SE Asia, I never made it to Malaysia or Indonesia, even though they were on my itinerary (Thailand and Laos and Cambodia were just too interesting). Then, once I got to Eastern Europe, I realized that the true "feel" of the trip belonged in Asia. Thus I spent half a year in the Middle East, even though I hadn't really planned on it. Then, after that, I spent half a year in India and Myanmar, which were never on the original itinerary. In the end, I was glad that I deviated from my original plans, because my journey was so much richer when I improvised as I went.