This is an excerpt from my book “Vagabonds: Sometimes Getting Lost is the Point” . It’s available as an ebook for kindle or ebook readers. Over the next several months we will be exploring some of these amazing vagabond characters from the past (and present).
Today, I’m going to be introducing you to Ed Byrne. You might ask…who? Well, I would say the Ed Buryn is the godfather of vagabonding in the modern age. There are a lot of guys and gals who came before him, but his books from the 1960’s and 1970’s pretty much defined the modern act of vagabonding and have been well known and circulated in the nomadic underground since they were published.
When I started vagabonding in the late 1990’s my bibles were Ed’s Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa and Vagabonding in America. It’s hard to describe the books without you seeing them, so I recommend you pick them up. They are long out of print but can still be found circulating on Ebay, Amazon, and in used bookstores and thrift shops around North America. At the moment there are two copies of the USA book and one of Europe and North Africa on Amazon, here are the links to them. First come, first serve because I’m not selling my copies!
Here are a couple of alternate titles for the USA book…
Vagabonding in the USA: A Guide for Independent Travelers and Foreign Visitors
Vagabonding in the USA: A Guide for Independent Travel
What makes these books special? The truth is that it is Ed and his way of seeing the world, travel, and life. And just in case you are thinking that Ed is dead and gone, he’s not. In fact, in 2008 he started (but seemed to stop) blogging and you can find his blog at http://edburyn.wordpress.com/
Here is how he describes himself:
An explorer of diversity and philosopher of possibility, Ed Buryn (that’s me!) has worked as a newspaper delivery boy, aircraft radar operator, electronics technical writer, corporate manager, free-lance photographer; written several vagabonding guidebooks; and designed a major Tarot deck.
My personal mottos are: “I’ve you in eye-view” (as a photographer) and “Ed’d edited it” (as a writer). My books and photographs are explorations of the nature of human experience viewed through the lens of my own. My pics and words have been published in hundreds of books, magazines, and newspapers; and I am a two-time prizewinner in the Nikon International Photo Contest. Writing and performing poetry is a main interest of mine, and I was co-producer of the Nevada City Poets Playhouse for 8 years. Currently I am a full-time, online bookseller working from my home.
I have three grown daughters by three grown mothers and consider fatherhood to be my most important creative achievement. I live quite happily on the edge of Nevada City CA on a former goldmine.
This blog is an experiment in communication. We’ll see how it goes.
As to why Ed has influenced so many vagabonds, just check out this nugget of wisdom from Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa
“It’s up to you, that’s what’s great about being a vagabond. Once you decide that you can be a free agent, then that means you’re really free to go anywhere you like. You’re not dependent on travel agents or anybody else to make arrangements for you. You’re the one who’s going on the trip, so why not do it from the beginning? Plan it yourself; work it out yourself.”
Or this one from Vagabonding in the USA
Travel is not just moving over the earth from one place to another in some kind of conveyance. It’s not about where you’re going or how you’re getting there. It’s not about getting away from it all, at all. In fact, more the opposite … a way of getting to it all. Travel is a metaphor for life, a way of experiencing it more intensely and self-consciously. Traveling is not so much an action as an enlightened state of consciousness, opening you to fresh experience, to fresh looks at the world and yourself in it.
What’s Ed doing today? Selling used books online from his 3 acres in Nevada City, California and attending the burning man festival every year. He’s a dedicated Tarot lover and as such, I think it proves that this brotherhood of fools (called vagabonds) come from a long lineage.
Here is another bit from Vagabonding in the USA
“Routines and habits are the Known, protecting us from the Unknown. Habits are also called home. Habits tame the raw wilderness of existence into the civilized comforts of everyday life. Unfortunately, as we all know, habits gradually domesticate all the wildness and energy out of life. So much energy gets bound up in routines and habituated patterns, keeping them alive, that your life goes dead instead. Thus, if you want to discover again the wild side of life, you have to leave “home”; you have to break or dissolve your habits in order to release the energy locked up inside them.”
Long Live the Vagabond King!
