Finding Yourself

Each of us maintain our own reasoning behind the drive to pick up and leave; to seek change and live a different life for a day. It is a near primal desire to understand ourselves through the freedom of an open road, with no specific plans or place to be and no roots to tie to a home. Home instead is the pavement on which we run, prepared for the unexpected and embracing the unknown with open arms. 

Kafka “Buddy” Timothy Santillan is a man whose drive for adventure has shaped his lifestyle as well as his being. 

“For a good part of my life,” Buddy recalls, “I thought my dad was the most outdoorsy of all of us. I remember him being a missionary when I was younger and he used to go away for about a month or two over the summer [...] So I think him leaving so much I was like ‘Oh yeah, that’s totally what I want to do, is travel as much as he does.’” 

Inspiration for adventure stems from more than just his father. His mother, Sarah, and Step-Father, Marcus, take whatever spare time they can to venture out on weekend getaways, encouraging him to do the same. In more recent years, Buddy has taken advantage of where he stands in life now to reach out for what he wants. Whether he has to adventure alone or with companions, it doesn’t matter, so long as the drive is there he will go. Unafraid to attend concerts by himself or trip out to Arizona alone to meet a friend, he holds an admirable courage in him to take all that he can from life. 

Arizona was an important trip to him for several reasons. Spanning over a brief course of 3 days in August of 2019, Buddy had just turned 21. For five years, him and this friend had been gaming online. They had joked about meeting up on and off till finally they decided it could really occur. 

  “Two days after we had that conversation I hopped in my car and I drove down to Tuscan, Arizona, and for me that was awesome because I was just totally on my own. I was like ‘I don’t know where the hell I’m going. I know nothing about Tuscan, at all. All I know is desert and Arizona has very pretty deserts,’” Buddy said, thinking back fondly on the trip, “But getting there, it was a whole different idea of like... I mean I could stay there as long as I want. I didn’t have to go home after that. I could have easily gone anywhere else [...] at this age and point in my life I don’t really owe anyone any kind of personal responsibility to spend time anywhere specific and I think that idea in itself is freedom. I can up and leave and not tell anyone and there’s nothing no one could do. I could run away anywhere and no one could stop me. And I think there’s a lot of freedom in that.” 

For anyone who has ever jumped in a car or got on their bike or threw on their running shoes just for the sake of hitting the road, the idea Buddy describes here captures that motivation. The first solo trips of our youth are key in the introduction to the concept that life is so much broader than we could have imagined, all we have to do is reach out for it. With drive and courage, we too can take advantage of the many adventures life has to offer. 

This idea didn’t stop at Arizona for Buddy. Earlier that year he had considered moving to Utah for a time, feeding the idea that at this stage in his life he has the ability and the freedom to go where he wants. 

“That’d be fun to do for a year, even if it never worked out.” Buddy had thought, feeling a deep rooted desire for change, “and I do kind of wish I had done it just to say I had done it and I mean I feel like I still could, just for the pure notion of saying I can [...] I think a little bit of me is still like ‘you should have went.’”

Utah fell apart, and then after Arizona, Canada came into view. Buddy works as a rigger for the Alpine Training Service Team (or ATS Team) mainly in the reality TV sector, where they build trusses, grid structures and obstacle courses for various shows. The company has allowed him to travel around mostly within America, but last year, the opportunity arose to go to Canada and he fell in love with the area. 

  “I had just sold my jeep and I was like ‘I have all this money.’ Like if I really wanted to, I could just move to Canmore and spend some time there.” Buddy toyed with the idea for a while, weighing his options. 

He felt there wasn’t much keeping him home in California. Even after moving around the state roughly five times, he knew there was more out there and the drive to understand and see it all sits at the forefront of who he is. “I don’t really know what the driving force is behind these ideas, but I do think that they’re worth exploring a little bit more in my life. Even if it’s just for the sake of saying I did it,” Buddy said. “I don’t think I would need any personal takeaways to feel like it wasn’t a waste. I think I just need the satisfaction of knowing I had done it and followed through with it, and then I could be ok; Now I can think more about where I want to be more permanently.” 

It’s not uncommon in our youth for the world to feel small, to struggle to solve the problem of expanding our universe when our piece of it is so limited. The best remedy is adventure. Whether small weekend getaways as Marcus and Sarah do or traveling through work or jumping in your car with little idea as to where you’re going. There’s never going to be a perfect time to venture out into the world, all we can do is pack a bag and take charge of our lives. Adventure can be messy, and that’s the point. We’ll never know what’s out there until we leave. 

When asked why adventure is important to him, Buddy’s answer grabs at the soul.

“Adventure is important to me because I believe that perspective is important to me and I think that without adventure there is no perspective in life. You know, adventure is 50% a conscious decision and 50% not, I feel. I feel like if you’re not putting yourself out there you’re not getting the best that life has to offer. I think there’s so many crazy people out there with all these crazy stories and I [think if you’re not] including that in your life you’re not getting the most out of it. I think if you’re staying in the same spot and staying kind of dormant in everything you do there’s no way to branch out. And I mean, we’re only on this planet however many years, 80 or 90 years, and afterwards no one knows really what the hell’s gonna happen to you after that. And it’s like why wouldn’t you want to go and see as much as you can? You know? Why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to do something new or go to a place that you never would have gone to before and like it’s crazy because there’s people out there who are like ‘I have no interest in traveling. I just want to stay in this one spot and not see anything else and not do anything outdoorsy.’ And it’s like why? Why do you not have that drive to see something new and see, you know, the small beauties of this planet before either we fuck it up or we die? So I feel like not adventuring when you have the opportunity to do so is wasted effort and I mean, ultimately, to each their own, but I feel that you should always have someone in your life who’s going to push you to go out there and make you want to adventure. You know? I think everyone needs a little catalyst to get them moving and it doesn’t have to be crazy, but it just has to be something. If everyone in their lives could have one life-defining moment where they start to question everything that they’ve done, then I think that they’ve hit one of the meanings of life. Right? If you don’t have this crazy moment where you take into perspective everything that you’ve lived through for the past 20, 30, 40 years and you’re like ‘holy crap,’ you know? You start to look at the world differently. I think if you don’t get that moment in your life, then, you know, what were you really doing?”