When I was younger, I’d hope on my bike and ride around the neighborhood, going to the mall to play video games in the arcade or to the sports complex to play baseball or to the junior high to play basketball. I’d ride my bike through neighborhoods, my Walkman blaring Nirvana or Soundgarden or Stone Temple Pilots. I’d just roam, no set direction, no set destination. I’d just be.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered that I am a roamer, a person who just wants to be somewhere with nowhere to be. When one roams, one moves about aimlessly, traversing a typically wide area. Roaming seems so grandiose, so life changing, as if I’m like Jules at the end of Pulp Fiction talking about roaming the Earth following the “miracle” he experienced. Yet, it’s not like that. It’s not a traversal of grand spaces, miles upon miles of walking without purpose or direction. Rather, it’s a desire to exist within those spaces, to allow yourself to become part of the spaces.

I think about all of this when I travel. Typically, when I go somewhere, I don’t have a plan about what I want to see and what I want to do, unless I am leading a trip somewhere as I did to France last May. Even during the study travel to France, I incorporated time to roam the cities where we stayed. In Nice, for example, I wandered up a mountain to the Cimetière Israélite, which, unfortunately, was closed on the day I went. However, the path kept leading me up the mountain to panoramic views of the city. I gazed out at the Mediterranean and back inland towards the Alps. If I didn’t meander to this spot, I never would have caught an image of a seagull gliding through the air above Nice. I wouldn’t have experienced the grandeur of the landscape. I would have missed so much.

Roaming orients me. It provides a way for me to get my bearings, without the help of my phone or other devices, and to learn about the space. In York a few years back, one of the first things I did was walk along the city wall. During my walk, I came across Gatehouse Coffee, a coffee shop inside one of the gates of the old city wall. I could have found this shop using my phone, but wandering aimlessly, without any clear purpose, made discovering Gatehouse Coffee so much more rewarding. It was as if I’d stumbled across something unexpected, and that feeling made the experience more impactful because it just happened.

Roaming doesn’t have to be some grand, solitary experience. In Knaresborough, England, my family and I walked around the town. England is a “right to roam” country, meaning one can walk on private or common land with marked paths. We found a path that travelled around Knaresborough, and we started walking. Somewhere along the way, we lost the path and ended up in a field. When we found our way out of the field, which was in fact a pasture, we saw a sign at the gate that read “Bull in Field.” We didn’t see the bull, thankfully, and the sign made the excursion a memory we won’t forget because if we did see the bull, we don’t know what would have happened.

While I roam, I keep my eyes open for things around me, for signs and indications to tell me about the area where I am roaming. Being observant, for me, is a key aspect of roaming because when one roams one must be aware of their surroundings, and through observation one learns about the people and area. During my time in Marseille, I went out early one morning to walk around the city and came across some graffiti on the ground. It read, “La violence est policiere l’etat assassine.” A few weeks after our return to the United States, the protests following the murder of Nahel Merzouk took place in France, and the images I saw on news reports showed protests in Paris and Marseille. While I knew the history of Marseille before my trip and the protests, seeing the graffiti drove home why protests in Marseille took place over the murder of Merzouk and not, at least on the same level, over the raising of the retirement age.

Along with the graffiti, I also came across posters in the Algerian and Moroccan districts of the city for events remembering the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. This flyer, along with stickers that simply read “J’existie,” told me a lot about Marseille and the tensions that exist within that city. If, as a tourist, I just came and walked to the port or to the calinques or to the churches, I wouldn’t see these things. I’d be oblivious to them, and when I saw the images of protests in Marseille, of people breaking windows along the Canibere, I wouldn’t understand. I’d simply think, “They’re violent and destructive.” I wouldn’t understand, at least on some level, the tensions and oppression they feel. I am not saying I totally understand it, but noticing things as we roam helps us to understand.

No matter where I am I roam. On a drive, to somewhere I have been thousands of times, I may take another route, one that I don’t know, just to experience something different and to learn the layout of the area. These routes may not always take me where I want to go, and nine times out of ten I basically circle back to where I deviated from the initial route, but these turns impact me. They help me see what’s around me. They help me cognitively because I have to orient myself to things that I know, thus making me think about where I am going and what I am don’t at the time.

During college, I would drive the backroads of Louisiana, before cell phones with GPS and cameras. I’d roam the roads, and as I drove, I’d see the sunset. Sometimes, I’d stop by the side of the road, looking out over the landscape as the sun painted orange and yellow over the green on the horizon and snap a picture with either a disposable camera or a digital camera. I’d sit there a take in the view. If I was on the interstate, I wouldn’t have seen these sites. I’d have been focused on my destination, not the journey.

Roaming provides time and space to inhabit ourselves and to learn. It provides time and space for us to experience the world and free ourselves of set destinations and expectations. It provides us time and space to just be, in all its forms, within ourselves.

What are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.