WANDERLAND - Living the Traveling Life - Kate Evans : 119

Imagine packing your life into a suitcase and stepping into the world as your home. That's the reality for Kate Evans, our remarkable guest who, alongside her husband Dave, traded the predictability of a permanent address for the boundless freedom of a nomadic life. Their story, as chronicled in "Wanderland: Living the Traveling Life," exudes a compelling allure for anyone who's ever dreamed of experiencing the richness of the world beyond the confines of a conventional lifestyle.

Kate Evans, PhD, is the author of eight books, including a duet of memoirs: Wanderland: Living the Traveling Life and Call It Wonder: An Odyssey of Love, Sex, Spirit & Travel, winner of the Bisexual Book Award. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared widely. 

We uncover the strategic planning and serendipitous moments that colour Kate's travels, the emotional landscapes navigated, and how her philosophy of minimalism isn't about having less but living more. Her journey, punctuated by the pages of her book, is a testament to the transformative power of embracing the unknown and the value of experiences over possessions.

This conversation isn't just about globetrotting; it's a deeper dive into the art of storytelling, connecting with others through shared narratives, and the relentless pursuit of personal fulfillment. Kate's insights on the nuances of a nomadic lifestyle and the courage to write one's own story—whether through the lens of a camera, the strokes of a pen, or the steps across unfamiliar lands—resonate with the soul of every aspiring wanderer like me. 

Kate and Dave live part of the year in Baja California Sur, Mexico, and they travel the rest of the time. 

Let's enjoy her story. 

To connect with Kate: www.kateevanswriter.com
Retreat website: https://tehomcenter.org/writingmexico2024

Transcript

Daniela SM: 0:04

Hi, I'm Daniela. Welcome to my podcast, because everyone has a story, the place to give ordinary people, stories the chance to be shared and preserved, or stories become the language of connections. Let's enjoy it, connect and relate, because everyone has a story. My guest is Kate Evans, an author of eight incredible books and a traveler. Her nomadic lifestyle spoke to me so we focused on her book Wonderland Living the Traveling Life.

Daniela SM: 0:40

This episode isn't just about global trotting. It is a deeper dive into the art of storytelling, connecting with others through shared narrative and the relentless pursuit of personal fulfillment. Kate's thoughts of living a nomadic lifestyle and having the bravery to create one's narrative through photography, writing or exploration of new lands deeply resonates with my adventurous spirit. For almost five years, my passion for traveling, connecting with different communities and finding a sense of belonging has been growing stronger. I hope you enjoy Kate's story as much as I did and maybe you want to get her book, which I am currently reading while preparing to embark on a new adventure with my husband, dave.

Daniela SM: 1:31

Kate and her Dave live far of her year in Baja California, mexico, and travel the rest of the time. Let's enjoy Kate's story. Welcome, kate to the show. Hi, daniela, thanks for having me. Yes, I'm very excited that you're here, because we met through another guest that we had at the show. I am fascinated about your story and I know you also wrote in a fantastic book that I'm in the process of reading, so tell me why you want to share your story.

Kate Evans: 2:00

I love sharing my story because reading other people's stories and hearing other people's stories has changed my life. I like to be in conversation with people who share the stories of their lives. The other reason is I live a pretty unconventional life. I like to talk to people about how I do it because I think it can inspire people, as other people's stories have inspired me, and help them to see that maybe there are other ways to do this living thing other than what we've been told. The center of what it is that I'm doing is really living a traveling life, and that's the subtitle of my book. The title is Wanderland Wanderland and the subtitle is Living the Traveling Life.

Kate Evans: 2:45

One of the ways that I've been able to make this possible because I'm definitely not a millionaire is to do a lot of house sitting. So my husband and I we travel the world staying in other people's homes. Oftentimes that involves taking care of a pet, taking care of their space, and it's really this wonderful exchange where we've met all kinds of amazing people all over the world. So it's not a paid job. We just have an opportunity to travel less expensively because we have free places to stay and in fact, as I speak to you. Now. We're staying in Mazatman, mexico, for a month in this really sweet apartment, and this one actually does not involve animal care, which is pretty unusual. But at any rate, I want to share my story because I think what we're doing is interesting and unusual.

Daniela SM: 3:39

You're right, kate. It is super interesting and it is not the usual thing to do. So tell me, when does your story start?

Kate Evans: 3:49

I think my story starts from when I was a little girl. There was always something in me that was drawn to stories, other people's lives that showed them living a different way. So, for example, when I was a little girl I loved Pippi Longstocking. You know she lived in this remarkable place. Was it Sweden or Norway? No, I can't remember but she lived in Europe. She didn't live with her parents and she had this independence and she was strong and she was wild and she had those pigtails that stuck straight out. So I was just drawn to the unconventionality of her. And then other stories that I think about reading in my life that suggested there was something beyond the kind of conventional suburban life that I was living in Northern California as a girl.

Kate Evans: 4:34

Everything I'd been told about what you're supposed to be as a girl, even though I did get messages that said you know you can do and you can be everything you know. The broader consensus in society is that as a woman you know there's certain things you're supposed to do, of course get married, have babies, have a job, work until you're 65 and then, if you're lucky and you have your health and you haven't yet died, then you can actually be free and do what you want after that, and somehow that never equated for me. In fact, I remember once being in my car, driving through really bad traffic to a job that I didn't like, and it struck me at that moment that I was driving to this job through this horrible traffic so that I could afford to buy the car I was sitting in to drive me to the job. So I began to question this. You know mentality of that. You need to buy a bunch of stuff, you need to buy a big house and you need to fill it with stuff, that your life needs to be centered around making money so that you can have a particular lifestyle.

Kate Evans: 5:37

I went through a lot of trials and tribulations around trying to figure out what that meant for me in my life, and I write a lot about that actually in my first memoir, which is titled Call it Wonder. But by the time you get to Wanderland, my second memoir, you can see that my husband and I figured out another way to do this living thing and I was able to retire early. There was a lot of luck that went along with that, but also we lived a very minimalistic lifestyle by the time we decided to go out and live without a home. For a while we lived without a house and we just traveled. We only had one car, which of course, meant one insurance payment. We had lived in small places up to then, so that you couldn't buy a bunch of stuff and fill it with things, so really, we ended up spending our income on traveling places and on experiences rather than on things. To this day, we pretty much live that way.

Daniela SM: 6:35

That's a very wise way of thinking. I mean, some people are different, of course, and some people wouldn't appreciate that, but I feel like people learn that late in life rather than sooner. And about Pippi Lansdroom I used to like her too. Yes, I remember she was from Sweden. That was so long ago, that show, I didn't know that anybody actually remembered that. Okay, so when you were younger, you already knew that it was supposed to be different, right, but it took you a long time to realize that traveling was the answer.

Kate Evans: 7:06

Well, I think, like I said, I always loved the idea of travel and I wanted to go to other places. But then I fought with that inside. When I got married at a young age and actually my first marriage was when I was only 22, for whatever reason bought into this idea of living a much more conventional life. But I got divorced in my late 20s and, by the way, I'm 60 now. One of the first things I did was actually move to Japan. So I wanted that experience of being somewhere else, living somewhere else. I taught English in Japan. I lived in Yokohama for a year. It began to open doors for me and to see what was possible.

Kate Evans: 7:43

But then I came back to California and I kind of got wrapped up again in another relationship, and this time it was with the woman. We were together for 15 years and I write a lot about that and call it wonder. She didn't like to travel, she didn't like to go other places. Whenever I encouraged her to and we would go together, she actually ended up enjoying it. But then we'd come back home and so she was more of a homebody, and there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, sometimes I look at other people's homes and they've done such a beautiful job of creating a gorgeous world in their home, and I think that's wonderful. It's just not my way, and so that was one of our big conflicts in our relationship.

Kate Evans: 8:21

So after we divorced, the first thing I did was start traveling whenever I could. I was teaching at a university at the time, but when I had winter and summer breaks I would find ways to go places. And then I met Dave, the man that I'm with now. We've been together for 13 years. We were both working long hours when we first met, and it's kind of interesting how eventually it morphed into what we're doing now, just a couple of years later.

Kate Evans: 8:49

When we first met, we both knew that we loved travel. We talked a lot about that, but we hadn't really envisioned what we're doing now. It just sort of began to unfold. One of the first things that we did, though, along this path and I write about this also and call it wonder is that we decided, after I retired and he wasn't working, to just live for one year.

Kate Evans: 9:10

We just decided just try this for one year. Let's live without a house and travel and visit friends and rent Airbnbs, and we were hooked after that, after that first year, and that's when we discovered house-sitting and that changed everything, because then, even though it was still really fun to visit friends, we didn't have to rely on staying with friends and we didn't have to spend the money for renting places. We could live for long periods of time in places. So it's very different than being a tourist, although we definitely do touristy things, but it's different from them being a tourist because we actually live in places for long periods of time, but this house-sitting in the way that you have to go where it's available rather than you choose in the country.

Kate Evans: 9:50

Well, we belong to four different websites that offer house-sitting opportunities, and there are thousands of opportunities all over the world. So there's definitely some truth to what you're saying, but it's not a limited opportunity in the sense that there are many, many, many options. There are many people that actually house-sit full-time. We now have a house in Mexico, and so we have our own home base, but there are people that house-sit full-time and a lot of times they're in another country. They're already there and house-sit opportunity will come up, and because they're already there, they have a better chance of getting the sit, and so they sort of yeah, they do follow the sits, and so sometimes opens up all kinds of possibilities too. Like wow, I never really even thought of being in this place, but here we go and let's try it. So it is very different from deciding I'm going to go on a vacation to Paris and spend a week or two in Paris. That said, there are definitely there are house-sits in Paris that do pop up sometimes.

Daniela SM: 10:52

Do you have specific parameters that you say we are going to look at what is available, but no less than a week or no less than a month?

Kate Evans: 11:00

It just depends on the situation that we're in. It's not like we're always making the decision about where we're going to go based on we're at our house. The number one parameter we have is what looks interesting. That's our first determination is like oh, let's look at the website. Oh, look at this, look at this, look at this, that looks interesting, let's try it. So we read the descriptions. We've ended up going places that we never would have thought of going, based on what's available on the websites.

Kate Evans: 11:29

That said, we're planning on going to Europe next year and we've never been together before. Both of us have been in the past, but never together, and I think it's going to be a little bit different when we do that. But we don't house-sit the whole time, so we'll do maybe a few weeks a month, whatever a couple of months in a place, and then maybe, as I said, we'll maybe rent a place because we want to experience that. Let me give you an example. We had a fabulous house-sit in Hawaii, on the Big Island, for three months, and then we had one for a month on Maui and we realized we both wanted to experience the small island of Molokai. Many people have never gone there. I've always been really interested in it, and so we rented an Airbnb and went to Molokai. So, wherever we are, if we want to see something else and there's not a house-sit opportunity, we find another way to do that, if we can.

Daniela SM: 12:22

But at the end you're still kind of not spending too much, because it's only for maybe a week or two that you will just pay for accommodation. Exactly, and going back to the beginning of this adventure of yours, how was the feeling when you decided, okay, maybe we are going to take off for a year? How do you prepare?

Kate Evans: 12:40

It was super exciting, a little scary because of the unknown, but I just kept reminding myself that the void is fertile, that there were going to be things that we were going to experience and discover that we couldn't know in advance, that we had to jump off that cliff in order to have those experiences. So it really is a lot about letting go of control. And, yeah, I was ready. I was ready to try something different. I'd been teaching for a lot of years and, as much as I loved teaching, it sort of had a shelf life for me. You give so much when you teach. I was ready to try something else. I also wanted to focus on writing. I've been a writer for many, many years. I wanted to have that be the center of what I was focusing on, not so much teaching. As I said, it felt like what we were doing made perfect sense in a crazy, wild way.

Daniela SM: 13:41

When you both decided that you wanted to do these? How long did it took before you did it?

Kate Evans: 13:46

Here's what happened. We were living in Santa Cruz, California, in a really sweet place we were renting that we really loved. We were in the car, driving somewhere and we got a call that the place that we were living in was going up for sale. This was in spring. I had already planned to retire in just a couple of months. Our idea was I was going to retire and we were going to travel, but we were going to have Santa Cruz still be our home base. When we found out the place was going up for sale, we did have an opportunity perhaps to buy it, but that's some of the most expensive real estate in the world. We knew if we were going to do that, make a commitment to doing that that I'd have to reverse my idea of retirement and he may have to go back to work. Is that really what we wanted to do? As much as we loved it, did we want all of our resources to go into a place just that we could stay there.

Kate Evans: 14:34

We were in the car, driving along and saying, okay, well, what are our other options? We brainstormed as we were driving. I took out a pen and took notes. I was just noticing, as we were talking about the options, how I felt inside. We could rent another place in Santa Cruz and inside it I kind of drooped a little. We have these friends that are developing this kind of communal living situation. Maybe we could talk to them again. Sort of drooped inside Then, out of all the options.

Kate Evans: 15:01

Suddenly Dave said well, what if we lived without a house for a while? And the energy inside me just exploded. I got super excited at that idea. It wasn't really a logical reaction, it was more of an emotional reaction that I was paying attention to. I said, wow, what will we do? He said, well, think about all the people that we know. We have a lot of friends that were living in other parts of the world. What if we just went and visited them and spent a year traveling around? I got so excited at that idea we decided to do it. I think after that conversation, just two or three months later, that we got rid of everything we owned almost everything we owned and we took off Excellent.

Daniela SM: 15:43

I think the excitement you're very smart, that you actually was trying to feel. How am I feeling every time there is an option presented?

Kate Evans: 15:57

Yes, I try to follow that. How I feel about something is extremely important information.

Daniela SM: 16:02

The other thing, kate, is now you're traveling, but sometimes people retire and then they don't have a hobby or they don't have anything else to do. That's how you get old, because you're not using your brain as much. You did have a hobby you wanted to write more, which is not a hobby. I guess it's a job. Now, what about your husband? How did you develop that? How did you know that you were going to be busy with something else?

Kate Evans: 16:28

His way of being in the world is very in the moment and pretty relaxed For him. He never worries about how to be busy For him. He just in this moment. Whatever it is, he gets involved in it or takes care of it. So some of the things that he loves to do I mean he loves to read. We both read a lot.

Kate Evans: 16:48

Whenever we're making plans to travel, he does a lot of research on the places that we're going and all of that. We both have a home yoga practice. So wherever we are, we're doing yoga almost every day. Wherever we're traveling, he again is sort of researching it and saying, oh, we need to go check this out, let's take this hike, let's do this, let's do that, that kind of stuff. He loves to garden. So when we're back at our little place in Mexico, he does the gardening.

Kate Evans: 17:17

So he has lots of interests and the truth is, both of us love downtime. We have a lot of downtime. It's not like we plan it, but we really enjoy having times when we don't have any plans and we don't have anything that we quote, have to do. And it's funny because people will say, oh, you went here, you went to Mazatlan, did you see this, this, this, this in this, and I'll say, yeah, we saw whatever, those four of those 10 things maybe, and we're okay with that because for us it's about living somewhere. So, like here in Mazatlan, we really enjoy walking to the Mercado, which is this big, huge sort of open-air market, and we just enjoy wandering around there, buying fruits and vegetables, watching people, seeing what else is available around us and then walking back. For us, that is a beautiful day spent.

Daniela SM: 18:15

Yes, I can imagine For me too. I love to go to markets. I don't really like where everybody goes, you know, getting lost between the street and seeing what's going on.

Kate Evans: 18:25

Same here. I enjoy wandering. In fact that's why my book is titled Wanderland. There are a lot of people who like to count how many countries they've been to and they like to keep lists of everything they've done and everything that they want to do, and we kind of handle it a little more organically than that. I've never counted the number of countries you've been to. I don't have a bucket list per se. There's something about wandering that I enjoy because you make discoveries.

Daniela SM: 18:51

Yes, that's true, and I know, talking to you in the past. Well, you gave me this impression that there is another virtual, another virtual world different from what mine is at the moment, because I am in one city and I don't know your world, and so I was wondering if you are always looking for a place to stay with these websites, how do you create the community of people that are doing the same as you? How do you get to meet people similar to you?

Kate Evans: 19:21

It's interesting you ask that, because we have a huge community of people who are nomadic and there's many different ways to define that People that have homebases, people that don't, people that have SIP, people that don't, people that travel full time, people that just travel a lot. And most of that community we've developed online a lot. There's a lot of groups that we belong to on Facebook, mostly To the point now where it's really great because some of the house SITs that we're getting we're getting through people that have done a lot of house sitting and we belong to a couple of groups, online groups of people that are all house sitters and when they get offered an opportunity to house SIT that they can't take, then they let the rest of us know about it and then sometimes we get the SITs that way rather than through the websites. For example, here in Mazatlan, the place we're staying in, we got this opportunity through. Another couple have been house sitting and traveling all over the world for about eight years, but now they're rooted here in Mazatlan. Now she knew about this opportunity. We're actually staying. It's really interesting. We're staying in a five-unit apartment complex but we're the only ones here, because this time of year they don't have renters in here and all we have to do is kind of keep an eye on the complex and see if anything happens and let the owner know. If there's some kind of problem, they'll get the pool all to ourselves. It's really awesome.

Kate Evans: 20:50

Found out about this through this couple that we had actually never met in person, we'd only met online, and she had posted this and Dave and I said great, let's do it. So now here we are in Mazatlan with her and her husband hanging out with them, and they're really great. And they introduced us to another couple who are actually from the very area of California that we're from, this other couple we've been hanging out with, going out to dinner, with hanging out, playing games with, and they're super great. We meet people that way. And then, of course, we just happen to meet people wherever we go, especially since we're staying in neighborhoods. So a lot of times we'll meet the neighbors and they'll say who are you? And we'll tell them who we are and we'll say, yeah, we're here for a month or two months and sometimes we get invited to people's homes. We get invited to whatever kinds of activities they're involved in. In fact, this is kind of a sweet story.

Kate Evans: 21:39

I already mentioned this long house that we did on the Big Island of Hawaii. When we first showed up, the homeowners were there actually for a couple of nights with us because there were certain aspects of the house that they needed to show us. It was kind of more of an off-grid place. The homeowner said to me hey, tomorrow morning I'm going on a walk with my friends, her women friends. They walk almost every morning together in the neighborhood and she said would you like to join me? And I said sure. So after she left, I continued to walk with these women almost every day, so I became her for a while. I was sort of living her life for a while.

Kate Evans: 22:13

These women I ended up really connecting with One of them. Her name is Loretta Buckley. She asked me about the fact that I'm a writer and I'm a writing coach and I'm a book editor and she'd mentioned that she'd been working on this manuscript for a long time and she asked me if I'd have a look at it and I did and it was fantastic and I edited it for her and then she ended up getting it published Her first book at age 76, I was there, I was part of it. I've been really fantastic to watch her book take off and for her to have this accomplishment and to just be a little tiny part of it. So wherever we go, we meet people. Some of them are travelers and some of them aren't Like. Loretta has lived in this neighborhood for many years in Hawaii, but I'm still connected with her on Facebook, which I love.

Daniela SM: 22:58

So would you say that you are getting connected more with, like expats rather than nomads, rather than the actual local people from the countries?

Kate Evans: 23:07

Definitely both, for sure, both. However, I think that our limited language abilities, which is something I'm working on, inhibits me from having an opportunity to really develop most relationships with people that speak other languages, and so both of us have been working really hard on our Spanish in the last, especially in the last year. We want to make more of an effort to connect with local people we definitely do, and sometimes the people that we're house sitting for, like, for example, when we did a house sit in Malaysia, it was for a Malaysian woman. We connected with her and some of her friends.

Daniela SM: 23:39

Obviously, the expense that you have in other you mentioned Malaysia is the flights. You will try to stay in a place for longer, like if you're in Malaysia. You will not take another house seating in Spain, for example. You will try to be closer For sure so that you can use the most.

Kate Evans: 23:57

Again, it just depends on the situation. What happened with Malaysia? So this is another piece of the experience that we've been having is, in addition to house sitting, other opportunities have come our way. A few years ago I had not been teaching I'd been retired for a few years at this point but I had this opportunity to teach at a university in China. We decided we wanted to do that and it was this incredible opportunity to live in China. But we were also close to Southeast Asia, so we spent a lot of time traveling in Southeast Asia. Part of that was getting this opportunity to do the house sit in Malaysia, so we were already over in that part of the world. But one good thing, of course, about having flexible lives like we do is it's a lot easier to get great deals on flights because we can decide oh OK, well, it's too expensive to fly on this Monday, but look, it's half the price to fly on Tuesday, so let's go on Tuesday instead. It's a pretty basic like that.

Daniela SM: 24:50

No, I see, Would you choose the house sitting first or the flight first? Oh, the house sit for sure. Ok, and they give you enough time. You know that maybe today, if it's January, by March they will need somebody, or they just last minute, kind of thing.

Kate Evans: 25:06

It really varies. Again, there are lots of sits that start next week on the sites and then there's others that start in a few months. It really varies, and two years ago we actually took our car from Mexico into the States and we just started traveling around the States. We had certain people we wanted to see, certain things we wanted to experience, like bike riding around the Grand Canyon, going into Carl's Bad Caverns we love having experiences in nature Along the way.

Kate Evans: 25:35

If we found a house sit, we would take it. We don't usually stay in hotels, but we did a little bit of hotel staying, did a little bit of staying with friends, we did a little bit of Airbnb's and then we found some house sits along the way. We spent a month in New Orleans on a house sit. We spent a month in Colorado on a house sit. We spent just a few days. We were going through Tennessee and we found a house sit in Chattanooga for just like a weekend and so we stayed there. It was really a fun kind of spontaneous sort of exploration and we ended up in Washington and spent four months at a house sit in Washington the state of Washington, and then we drove after that and we drove back down California, visited family and friends and went back to Mexico. We ended up driving 18,000 miles in about a year. It's a lot, wow.

Daniela SM: 26:22

That's incredible. So, kate, let's talk about your book. Now that I'm listening to your stories, I'm getting confused between what I read and what we have spoken. Wonderland, wonderland with an A Wonderland. What I liked about the book is that you were telling your story from your point of view. But you were so candor, like you were so authentic and you will say, not all good. Some parts, you will say, I was frustrating, I didn't like this, and I thought, oh, that's perfect, because I can see myself not liking that either. That doesn't mean that I'm a bad traveler. It means that, well, that's not really my thing. Like you were helping with the house where there were a lot of flies, and then, as soon as he left, you clean up and then the flies were gone Right and samples like that. So I really like this style very much. Tell me more about the book.

Kate Evans: 27:13

Thank you. Thank you for saying that Again, the book is really focused on. When Dave and I discovered house sitting, we sort of fell into it. So that house sit that you mentioned, with the flies that's toward the beginning of the book, we were actually house sitting. That one we hadn't even thought of as a house sit because someone had, through a friend, had invited us to come to this place and spend a couple of weeks and we had needed to be in this particular area anyway. We're like, oh cool, we'll get to stay in this house and take care of the things that we need to take care of at the time. Know what questions to ask? Now we have a whole list of questions to ask and in fact I include those in the book at the back, all the things that we ask homeowners before we actually take a sit.

Kate Evans: 27:52

So we just showed up and the homeowner was a really nice guy. He had been alone in the house by himself for at least a week because his family had left before him, his two small kids and his wife had left before him, and he had actually a small farm with a lot of about 40 animals ducks and chickens and rabbits and all these animals and we hadn't realized first of all it was that many animals and we also hadn't realized he was going to be alone and that it was going to be kind of chaotic in there. Those kinds of animals bring flies. It was a beautiful home and a beautiful location, but he had all the windows open. It was summertime and so all these flies had come in. And he didn't. He seemed a little oblivious about it, but it's something that matters to us. So when he left, yeah, the first thing we did was end up bam, bam, bam, killing, you know, killing all the flies.

Kate Evans: 28:37

And I was a little panicky because I didn't realize we were going to have to take care of this many animals. And they had. They had a huge garden, so but what's interesting to me about this story is when we first got there, I was panicky. I was actually crying the first night. I was overwhelmed.

Kate Evans: 28:53

But by the time we left, there was this transformation where I fell in love with the location. I fell in love with gardening and using all this fresh fruits and vegetables to make food. Dave was sort of being like a farmer, getting up at six in the morning and letting the animals out of their pens, and I was like the farmer's wife and I think that's the title of the chapter, actually is the farmer's wife. So there was something about letting go of my resistance to the place and seeing what was actually there and experiencing so much of it that made me really truly fall in love with it, and when it came time to leave, I almost didn't want to go because I really enjoyed being there. But it was while we were there that I discovered how, sitting on these wet different websites that there are, and we applied for one up in Washington state, where we have friends we got it and we decided to go. So the next chapter is about our first house sit that we got through the website, which had its really great aspects With the dogs.

Kate Evans: 29:49

Yeah, the ones with the dogs. Yeah, the two super strong, super sweet but super strong athletic dogs.

Daniela SM: 29:56

And that's interesting that you say that about change, right? Because when somebody says I love change, then in my point of view, before I thought okay, well, if that person likes change, it doesn't matter what you throw at them, they will be open. I always enjoy change, but as much as I enjoy change, sometimes I'm resisted to receive it and it takes me a little bit, and then I'm adapted really quickly. But I feel like that's what happens, that's what happened to you in the first story, even that you were open to do that adventure, that it still was something that your brain was saying I'm not used to this, this is not familiar, and that's why you didn't feel well. But then you embraced it and now you didn't want it to leave, so it didn't take you long to adapt.

Kate Evans: 30:38

Right. I think that's one thing I've learned in this last decade of doing this is that I'm much more adaptable than I even knew. Yeah, I think there's something about just throwing myself into new situations that somehow fits my personality. It fits Dave's personality really well too, in the sense that he relaxes about it more than I do. I often will have a kind of a freak out moment not often, but when we first started doing it I did. I'd often have a freak out moment. Not so much anymore. But I began to realize wow, you know, no matter what things work out, and even if the situation is not completely comfortable or not what I thought it was going to be, I learned something. I grow and sometimes it ends up being even better than I could have imagined if I let go of my ideas of what I think it's supposed to be.

Daniela SM: 31:31

Yes, that's true. I know things always work out. That's so true. The frustrated thing will be I think I'm very adaptable and then I go through the experience and I'm thinking I can't handle this and so I'm not as adaptable as I thought. That would be really frustrating.

Kate Evans: 31:45

Well, you know, I think it's good, I think it's really good for us to bump up against our limitations, you know, and to see where they are. I mean, for me, I see life as this opportunity to grow, and even when it's not comfortable, you know, that's why I think I like living this life, because it gives me plenty of opportunities to grow.

Daniela SM: 32:10

Have you met any couples that are doing the same as you and they less of an open mindset? Or is this a personality type, that you do these only if you are this type of person?

Kate Evans: 32:20

I think more the latter actually, but of course, there are people that focus on different things, like there are people that live this nomadic lifestyle and they spend a lot of time on cruise ships, which is not something that's something that I enjoy, right, and that's great. I'm not putting it down, I'm just saying you know that there's so many different ways to do it, and there are definitely people that do what Dave and I do, who wouldn't want to house it, for example. So they travel a lot but they don't want to house it. They want more control over their environment. They want to pick an Airbnb that has great reviews and they want to go there and they want to do that. You know there's so many different ways to do this. You know there's not one right way, but I do think that everybody that's doing it at some level is interested in this idea of life, of movement and life being transformation, beautiful and Kate the book.

Daniela SM: 33:09

Is this your style, or how do you decide that this is the way you wanted to share your story?

Kate Evans: 33:16

It's interesting I mean, I'm a writer this is my eighth book, actually I think when I write, ultimately, especially upon revision, because when I first write, I just dump out a bunch of stuff. Whatever's in my mind, I just dump it out, and there's a lot of chaos. And then when I'm going through and revising and I'm trying to, you know, create a story that I think other people might like to read, that's really what I want to do. I wanted to take people along on this journey, have them experience what we experience. So really it's about trying to get people emotionally invested in the story through a combination of highlighting, as you said, the difficult things but also the really wonderful moments. Anybody that's interested in this lifestyle, whether or not they actually want to live it themselves, will probably enjoy going along on the journey. The other thing is that the book is not just about traveling, but it really is a meditation on this idea of what is home, and I think a lot of people are interested in that idea as well.

Daniela SM: 34:12

Yes, but then when you have written all your eight books, can we see a signature of you in each book, or each book has been a different style?

Kate Evans: 34:22

I think the signature of me is that I like to tell the truth, whether I'm doing it in fiction or I'm doing it in memoir. I think people can tell when you're holding back and you're not. You're not, you know, telling your truths. I've always been super drawn to writers that are kind of like, willing to go there, to go places that you know. I don't necessarily mean physical places, but emotional places, mental places that remind us that even in all the weird thoughts that we have or the shame that we have or whatever it is, that we're not alone. So I think that people probably will see that in some aspect of that in most of my books.

Daniela SM: 35:08

It's interesting because you know, I like to be authentic to and tell people you know how things are. But I find that me sharing the stories you know, for example, if I want to tell you more of me during the podcast, I always feel that I don't think people is interested. And so how do you balance that? How do you think that, yes, everybody wants to listen to my story?

Kate Evans: 35:32

Like which portion? What are you referring to?

Daniela SM: 35:35

Well that when you're telling a story about something and I will tell you a story of mine that happens when I listen to it afterwards I find that, oh, it's not that interesting, I delete it. Yeah so I wonder how do you know that it has value for you or that it will have value for others?

Kate Evans: 35:53

I think we have to mine the meaning of it. It's not just this happened, this happened. This happened, this happened. We have to mine the meaning of it. Why does this matter? Why is this important in the bigger scheme of things? What is it telling us about being human? What is it about telling us about life? That's what makes any kind of story interesting, whether it's travelogue or whatever is not just that this happened, this happened. This happened, this happened, but the underlying human connection, human meaning that is important.

Daniela SM: 36:27

From the first book that you started and now is number eight, do you feel that you're a different writer now?

Kate Evans: 36:34

Well, sure, I'm a different writer. Just like building experience with anything, you grow and you change. If I look at my first novel, I look at my writing. Now I think I have more patience as a writer and I'm willing to spend more time digging, trying to dig a little bit deeper than I may have. I think of my first novel, which is actually a really fun novel, I think I was more focused on entertaining the reader versus thinking about some deeper questions and issues. That said, I think there's definitely still a lot of similarities. It's still my voice, my willingness, as I say, to go places.

Kate Evans: 37:09

For example, my first novel starts with a sex scene. I decided that I wanted to try to write a sex scene in a way that wouldn't be cliche. That was my challenge. As I said, I just go there because I think that books that matter to me, that I really love, as I said, they shine the light on some of the dark, shamy places that a lot of times we walk around and pretend that those things don't exist. In fact, that's one thing I love about books. So much is, I think that sometimes we read a book and we end up knowing the writer or the main character better than we even know our own mother, because we go inside, or our sister or our best friend, because we go inside somebody's mind and we get to see their mind and their heart, and we get to see the things that they grapple with, the things that matter to them, the things they struggle with. I think I've attempted to do that in all my books.

Daniela SM: 38:03

Well, that's beautiful. Thank you for pointing that out. Another thing that I wanted to ask is about the age. When you see people that have started to be a nomad, younger than others, do you see a difference? Do you see that the interests have changed, that the way they do things have changed? Would you start now what you've done 10 years ago?

Kate Evans: 38:24

That's interesting. I haven't really thought about that, but I do belong to a couple of groups with older nomads, so people 60 and above who are just starting it, and there are younger people that have found a way to become financially independent or whatever it is, at a younger age and then they do it at a younger age and I don't think I can make any generalizations about age. I think that clearly, the older you get, maybe perhaps the more you're concerned about healthcare, and I know that there are people that talk a lot about healthcare, that there's excellent healthcare available in places outside the United States at a fraction of the cost, and in fact, there's plenty of people that actually have became expats or became nomads because they were living in the States and they could not afford healthcare. That's probably one of the central concerns of perhaps, older people.

Kate Evans: 39:18

But for me I write about this in both my books and both my memoirs Call it Wonder in Wonderland. I've actually had in the last 10 years two pretty major medical emergencies in my life that we had to deal with while we were living this lifestyle, and I think for some people it might scare them. They might say, oh, wow, okay, I need to change gears, shift gears here and live a little bit more of a conventional life because I'm worried about my health, whereas in my case it just reminded me that I'm so grateful that I get to live the life that I want to live, and in fact both medical experiences sort of inspired me to continue to live this life.

Daniela SM: 40:00

You're a very brave woman. I remember your story about that, kate. What's next for you? More traveling, more books? Any other things? What are you planning?

Kate Evans: 40:11

Well, after we leave Mazatlán, we're going to Guanajuato, mexico, and then we're going to San Miguel de Allende two other parts of mainland Mexico that we really want to experience, that we haven't experienced yet and then we're going back to Baja and in the spring April 2024, I'm running a writing retreat called Reimagining Writing in Mexico. It's going to be this wonderful opportunity for people that are either writers, who are interested in writing, to come to this beautiful spot for six days, get the opportunity to be inspired as a writer, to connect with other writers. I'm doing it with my friend and writer, angela Yarber, doing it together, so if anybody's interested in that, they can check it out on my website, and so that's six days in Baja.

Daniela SM: 40:59

Yes.

Kate Evans: 41:00

On a beautiful beach, quiet, gorgeous location. Everything will be taken care of. All you have to do is fly into Cabo. We'll come get you and we'll take you to this beautiful, quiet spot where, together, we're also going to get to watch the solar eclipse, which is going to be be able to be seen from that spot on the beach.

Daniela SM: 41:18

So this is taking you back to your teaching times.

Kate Evans: 41:21

Yeah, since I left teaching, I've been teaching in different kinds of ways. I ran a. I ran a writing retreat similar to this one in Thailand a few years ago. As I mentioned, I taught in China for a year. I've run workshops in different places around the world because I do love teaching. I love to be able to find ways to do it, but that don't require me to be on a campus five days a week.

Daniela SM: 41:45

Because every writer is so unique, how can you teach and be open to everybody's styles?

Kate Evans: 41:53

People come to retreats like this because they want an opportunity to learn some new things, but also to just have this opportunity to tell their own truth and to share that with other writers. It can be so inspiring to write with other writers and to share with other writers, especially in a beautiful spot where everything's taken care of and you're getting great food and you're getting an opportunity to take walks on the beach, and yeah, it, it's true. I mean, like when I taught the retreat in Thailand, there were people that had never written and there were people that had published books and we all worked together so beautifully.

Daniela SM: 42:33

That sounds amazing. I love that. I wish I was a good writer. I don't think writing is. I don't know if it's because I'm not good at it that I don't really care, or it's because it's not my talent and I just prefer to speak to people than writing. I'm accepting the fact that maybe that's that's just not really my thing, rather than I am bad at it.

Kate Evans: 42:54

It's so funny. There's part of me that wants to try to convince you that you can. You can write if you really want to, because I feel like as a teacher I brought writing alive to so many people. But that said, you know, of course I mean, I'm not a painter, I'm not a sculptor. I would probably enjoy dabbling in that.

Daniela SM: 43:13

Of course, I would not going to say no or never. Who knows, maybe I will write a book one day. So, kate, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your story. Thank you, danielle, I really enjoyed it. Yes, me too. I appreciated all the team bits of knowledge that you shared. All right, take care. Thank you, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I am Daniela and you were listening to, because everyone has a story. Please take five seconds right now and think of somebody in your life that may enjoy what you just heard, or someone that has a story to be shared and preserved. When you think of that person, shoot them a text with the link of this podcast. This would allow the ordinary magic to go further. Join me next time for another story conversation. Thank you for listening. Hasta pronto.