Like most travelers, I have many reasons that I love travel: I revel in seeing new and amazing places for the first time.  My heart beats faster at experiencing unforgettable moments, whether it’s viewing a sunrise from a taxi in Mumbai or seeing a blue whale arch and shimmer in the Sea of Cortez.

I enjoy encountering new people I wouldn’t meet in my daily life, hearing their stories and seeing the world, however briefly, from their point of view. I enjoy getting out of my comfort zone and trying new things. The challenge of navigating a new place and finding my way with a map satisfies my thirst for adventure.

Ever curious, I love to explore and find out things I didn’t know before, whether learning something new in a museum, or observing the way people dress in a foreign country. Nature and culture are two sides of the world that I find endlessly fascinating. Then of course there’s the thrill of the hunt for the best restaurant or the first bite of a new taste sensation in an exotic new dish. Finding a delicious new wine that I’ve never tasted before is always a treat.

If I pare it down, I love traveling because it’s a path to the new and different. And to take it a step further, a trip is a vacation from the old and ordinary, the true but tired. I love leaving it all behind, and traveling light. And by “it,” I mean material goods, stuff, clutter. A trip offers a much needed vacation from all my “stuff.”

I just returned from a week on a small cruise ship, and all I took was clothes and shoes, toiletries, a notebook and pen, an iPhone, my Kindle, a camera, and binoculars. And a purse and a backpack, too. I lived happily with a modest amount of stuff and delighted in the freedom and comfort that comes from having just enough and no more.

There’s something uniquely satisfying about wearing each article of clothing multiple times and bringing just the right number of and type of shoes on a trip. When I pulled on my last pair of underwear and last pair of socks on our last morning, I couldn’t have been happier.

Even better, I spent next to no time caring for my stuff: no cleaning, no repairs, and no de-cluttering. My only “homework” was to put my gear back into the handful of drawers at night, and to clear off the desk and nightstand in the morning.

Yes, of course, the crew took care of cleaning the cabin. They cooked all our food, poured our wine, and organized our expeditions. Whatever “stuff” needed taking care of, the crew was on it. We were liberated from our stuff, free to explore the beauty of the Columbia and Snake Rivers unburdened by anything besides the clothes on our back.

We followed in the path of Lewis and Clark, who hauled an amazing amount of gear across the continent from St. Louis to the Pacific, using keelboats, pirogues, and canoes on water, horses and wagons on land. They returned with little besides their journals, maps, and stories. I suspect they couldn’t have been happier.