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ROLF POTTS
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YP: How do your parents feel about what you do?
RP: My dad has always been supportive. And actually my first trip was at 23. I traveled for eight months in  America, thinking I would get travel out of my system, and my Dad was supportive of that. My Mom wasn't too sure, but she's slowly come to terms with it. She's a farm girl, and I think she has a bit of traditionalism in her. And so she wanted me to have a job, and was a little worried that I would be sort of a bum. And that's sort of the stereotype you get if people don't understand what it's like to be a traveler. But since I've been writing for recognizable magazines and publishing books, it's less of an issue for her. Of course, not everybody can be a National Geographic Adventure writer. Not everybody's going to be able to keep their mom happy!
YP: Did you get the sense when you landed your column with Salon, that it was going to be the start of something big?
RP: Definitely. The article "Storming the Beach," which was sort of instrumental in getting me the column, was a huge thing. Because that got me in Best American Travel Writing as well, which is a real legitimizer. I was 28 when I wrote that, so that was great, but I had actually started writing freelance stories for Salon when I was in Korea.
YP: I remember seeing something you did for Outpost magazine about a trip to Hong Kong, where you stayed in the Chunking Mansions.
RP: That's an old one. That's when I was working in Korea. I'd started freelancing about Korea a little bit, and I was getting articles rejected by little podunk, online magazines that didn't pay, and I'm thinking, Why even put my energy towards these other magazines who sort of treat me like a peon? So I decided to try to put my energies into writing really well for Salon, and I sold maybe five more freelance articles that year. And so I got to thinking that I was already going to travel for a year or two on my Korea money, why not pitch the [Salon travel] editor, who I'm already getting to know, and see if he'll give me a column? Which was really naive, in retrospect. It's really semi-miraculous that I got the column. What I did, was I bought RolfPotts.com specifically for that, and I did a streaming video pitch of me walking around in Pusan.
YP: No way! That's brilliant.
RP: I did this 10-minute video, and then I didn't hear back. So I started traveling, and about a month into my travels I was sending some e-mails to friends, and my friend Steve e-mailed back and told me not to give up on Salon. He said, "Don't get emotional about it. Call him back, ask him how his day is going, and drop a little hint." So I called (Salon travel editor) Don George, and he said, "You know, I really like the column idea, but I'm still not sure. But I know they're shooting this Leonardo DiCaprio movie there, why don't you see what's going on?" And I said, "Well, I already has this sort of wild hare to go and infiltrate the set of the movie." And he said, "If you do it, I'll publish it." And so I sort of had a guaranteed venue for "Storming the Beach." I was going to do it anyway, but that made it that much easier to try. It was sort of a wacky thing. I'm somewhat of a reserved person, but it was a really gonzo thing to do. And so I did it, and I wrote it, and I exceeded my expectations with it, and I exceeded his. I brought in that philosophical angle, quoting Walker Percy and talking about the whole point of why you travel and why you go to certain places. It was just the right story for me at the right time. It made the cover of Salon, and it made it in Best American Travel Writing.
YP: Something I've noticed about your essays is that you probably drop more literary references than anyone I've ever read.
RP: That comes from a habit I started about eight years ago. When I traveled the U.S. I was going to write a book about it. I thought I was going to be Jack Kerouac or something, and I just completely fell on my face and wrote a really awful book. But I learned so many great lessons, and one of them was to start keeping track of quotes. So I have a quote file going back to the mid-90s, and I keep notes on books that I may never write.
YP: Do you feel like you've made any major sacrificies by choosing this lifestyle?
RP: I don't have a lot of alternative futures that I wish I was living. And I think that's because if you're open to it, if you're not cliquish about who you meet in your travels, than you can sort of sample parts of other people's lives. And there's some people who, maybe they're taking a three-month trip and this may be the biggest trip of their lives, and they're not going to be a die-hard traveler. But if you can make a connection with them, and not be competitive with them, you can learn from them and they can learn from you. When I came through L.A. a couple of weeks ago, I went to this big, swank celebrity opening of the W Hotel in San Diego. And it was sort of an adventure for me. That's not usually my crowd, but I had a great time, and I was seeing something I normally wouldn't have. And it was because I had befrinded a city planner in Egypt who's sort of a high-roller, and maybe the hippy-dippy crowd would look down on him, but he's trying to live deliberately, even as a wealthy guy.
YP: Life gets really interesting, I think, when you're able to get past being a presumptuous type of person and you're able to be friendly with anyone, genuinely.
RP: And feeling less like you need to identify yourself with something. Because I think a lot of little groups identify themselves by elimination. You know: I am who I am because I'm not this way. I hung out with a 70-year old guy in Burma, for instance. He was a minister of physical fitness for Burma for several years, and I saw his world for a day. So I have fewer "what if" sacrifices, because instead of there being alternative futures for me, I can just have one day as the sidekick of a Burmese fitness minister. Or as a good buddy of a guy who works in urban planning and goes to gala events as a matter of regular course. So that's decreased the number of "what ifs" for me. I think there are definitely sacrifices, though. There are some pleasures in having a home, for instance, and a more traditional family. But I think I can catch up with that. My sister and her husband are looking to buy a farm in northern Kansas, and I might invest with them and build myself a little writer's cabin so I can at least have a seasonal place to come back to. So I'm trying not to limit myself. Eventually I'll get married. I'll have kids eventually. I was staying with friends recently who have a four-year old and a two-year old, and they were talking about how they might be able to travel themselves when their kids are maybe seven and ten. But they were also talking about the pleasure they got out of their house. And I eluded to this in the book as well, that if you work to fund your travels, then you have so much more pleasure from them. All the landscaping I did in Seattle made my American travels that much more valuable for me, because I'd worked hard for it, and this was the fruition of what I'd done. When I traveled Asia, I had tutored in Korea until midnight to make the money to do that travel. And so I think investing yourself in an experience is good.
My friends, for instance, have a house, and they don't make a lot of money, but they got the loans, they fixed it up, and they put so much of themselves into their house that they can get pleasure out of that house in a way that, if they had inherited it, or if they'd had money since they were born, they might not be able to. So that's something that I'm still learning as well, that pleasure in any life experience is about personal investment, and taking a real interest. They learned things about the world from building a house. And I think you can use that same analogy in traveling. Maybe the people who are frustrated travelers need to go home and put some more work into something, so they can sustain travel again. The truth is that we're all born equally rich in time, and if you can make use of this time though travel, then you can enliven your life with what's important, and that's experience, and tasting new things.
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ISSUE 01 / SPRING 04
News
Read the latest news of Young Pioneers...
here.
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