The call to wander

M Mehran

Even as a child, when her classmates dreamed of steady jobs and neat houses, she dreamed of roads. Roads that stretched into forests, roads that curved along oceans, roads that disappeared into mountains. She didn’t know where they led—she only knew she wanted to follow them.

Her parents called her restless. Teachers called her distracted. But Aria knew the truth: she wasn’t lost. She was simply drawn to the horizon.


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When she turned twenty-five, she quit her office job. It wasn’t impulsive—at least not to her. Every day spent under fluorescent lights had chipped away at her spirit. One morning, staring at the glow of her computer screen, she whispered, “This can’t be it.”

So she sold half her belongings, bought a backpack, and booked a one-way ticket. She didn’t have a grand plan. Just a hunger to wander.

Her friends raised their eyebrows. “What if you get tired of traveling?” one asked.

Aria smiled. “Then I’ll stop. But first, I need to begin.”


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The first stop was a coastal town in Portugal, where the air smelled of salt and grilled sardines. She wandered through narrow streets painted in blues and yellows, her shoes tapping against cobblestones older than her country. She tasted bread baked in stone ovens, learned greetings in Portuguese, and listened to old fishermen swap tales on the docks.

She thought she’d stay for a week. She stayed for three.


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From there, she moved on—Spain, Morocco, Greece. Each place unfolded like a storybook. In Morocco, she got lost in a maze of markets, overwhelmed by spices, colors, and voices. In Greece, she climbed a cliffside village where every home was whitewashed, windows glowing with sunset.

At first, she took photos of everything—meals, monuments, strangers. But gradually, she began to put the camera away. She realized wandering wasn’t about collecting proof. It was about collecting presence.

“Be here,” she whispered to herself, “not just in the picture.”


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Wandering wasn’t always easy. There were nights she slept on train benches because she missed the last ride. Days when her money thinned and her stomach growled. Moments of loneliness, when she wished for a familiar face.

But in those moments, the road gave her gifts. A kind stranger offering bread. A child guiding her to the right bus. A fellow traveler who shared stories until dawn.

The road, she learned, was never empty.


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One of her most powerful memories came in Nepal. She had joined a small group trekking toward the Himalayas. The air grew thin, her legs burned, and she wondered why she had chosen such a path.

Then, one morning, they reached a ridge just as the sun rose. The mountains blazed gold, towering against a sky so sharp and clear it felt like eternity itself. Aria stood there, breathless not from altitude but from awe.

And she understood: wandering was not about escape. It was about remembering how vast the world was, and how small yet connected she was within it.


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By the time she returned home two years later, Aria was not the same. Her backpack was worn, her passport crowded with stamps, but the greatest changes were invisible.

Her family asked, “Are you done wandering now?”

Aria laughed gently. “No one is ever done. I’ve only begun.”

She no longer feared stillness, but she no longer worshipped stability either. She realized wandering was not just about movement across maps—it was about movement within. She carried curiosity into her conversations, openness into her work, gratitude into her mornings.

Even sitting at a café in her hometown, she felt the world alive around her—the accents of strangers, the stories hidden in faces, the possibility of roads waiting just beyond the corner.


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Years later, she wrote a journal entry that captured what wandering had taught her:

“To wander is not to be lost. It is to trust that life is more than routines. It is to walk roads with no promise but presence, to seek wonder without guarantee, to discover pieces of yourself scattered across landscapes, cultures, and people you never imagined meeting. Wandering is not a luxury—it is a reminder that the world is larger than your fears, and kinder than your doubts.”


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Now, whenever someone asked her why she chose to wander, Aria gave the same answer, a smile playing at her lips:

“Because every time I do, I find myself again.”

And somewhere, in the spaces between maps and memories, she knew she would keep walking—following roads, chasing horizons, listening for the quiet but undeniable call to wander.