Traveler of the Year: Theron Humphrey

A maverick storyteller documents the oral histories of everyday Americans.

• Theron Humphrey
• Meet the Travelers of the Year

Traveler of the Year Theron Humphrey in Oahu, the 50th state visited for his project, "This Wild Idea."

Photograph by Susan Seubert

The numbers alone are astonishing—365 days and some 66,000 miles logged on the road, 90,000 photos snapped, 50 states visited. And the cause is inspiring. Theron Humphrey took a year to see America and record the story of one person in film and audio each day. This storyteller’s monumental road trip echoes the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, but Humphrey’s oral history enterprise is rooted in a more personal motive.

“I got stirred up and wanted to live a different life. I wanted to discover new things and meet new people,” says 29-year-old Humphrey, who quit his job as a fashion studio photographer and hit the highway in August 2011 with a mission of befriending one person each day, every day, for a year and documenting that person's life story.

The result is a personal journey published online at thiswildidea.com, a site supported by donations from angel investors on the fund-raising platformKickstarter.com. Humphrey maps out his route and shares the tales of the people he’s met along the way.

There’s Liz Roma, a farmer in Vermont. Uncle Bobby, a Hawaiian canoe craftsman. And Patrick Millard, a Pittsburgh artist, who unexpectedly died a few days after the interview.

Humphrey’s histories document the tenor of our times, spoken by the people who populate a traveler’s landscape and framed by a photographer with an eye for detail. “It's in the American DNA to seek new ideas,” says Humphrey. “That’s what drove me.”

—By George W. Stone

THE INTERVIEW

National Geographic Traveler: Why is travel important?

Theron Humphrey: I can’t say anything new about the adventure in traveling, or the inherently human desire to discover, but I do know it’s real. It’s in my nature to want to explore.

NGT: Can you point to an experience that ignited your curiosity about the world?

TH: I remember waking up one day and realizing that the world doesn’t always see life the way I do. Even the folks that literally live next to me don’t. I figured if I could learn to listen, that would be a good start.

NGT: What inspired you to travel in the way that has resulted in your being chosen as a Traveler of the Year?

TH: Some incredible folks came before me, like Stephen Shore and Robert Frank. But I wanted to go into the world and know names and shake hands, not just point a camera at them. I wanted to know their story and celebrate their life.

My aim was to create work that would gain value over time. I would love to know what my great-grandmother’s voice sounded like, so maybe this project will be a part of giving someone that gift in 30 years.

NGT: Do you have a personal motto or mantra that embodies your approach to life and travel?

TH: Everyone has a good story. Everyone has something to teach me.

NGT: What do you never leave home without when you travel?

TH: My iPhone, for its camera. The road can be a lonely place. Being able to share images instantly with thousands of folks through Instagram made it feel like I wasn’t alone.

NGT: Do you have a favorite travel book or film?

TH: Travels With Charley. It’s hard to beat a book about a man traveling with a dog.

NGT: What was your most surprising food experience on your travels?

TH: Most of my meals were simple, but I did get a lobster roll from a roadside stand in Maine and remember thinking that I’d be willing to eat lobster rolls until I got gout. It was that good.

NGT: Name three places that you’d like to visit before you die and why.

TH: Is it OK to feel like I’ve been everywhere I want to go right now? I know that will change, but I feel content.

NGT: What's one place you’ve been to that you think everyone should visit?

TH: Fort Yates, North Dakota. There are some wonderful people doing good work there, and they could use some help. I suppose like a lot of reservations there is sadness, but there is also hope and folks we’ve never heard of trying to change lives.

NGT: What’s next?

TH: I have another project in the works that involves storytelling and open adventure on the sea.

I hope I always have a passion for going into the world and meeting folks, but I also want to collaborate. I’d love to be a part of helping others create what they love.

Traveler of the Year: Booker Mitchell

A Manhattan high schooler brings off-the-rails adventure to a new generation.

• Booker Mitchell
• Meet the Travelers of the Year

Booker Mitchell, shown here in his native New York City, hosts "Booker Travels," a Web-based video series that explores destinations through teenage eyes.

Photograph by Raymond Patrick

Every traveler knows that learning the local lingo is part of the pleasure of getting to know a new place. But frontside lipslide … backside crooked-grind …kickflip? What language is this?

It’s the lingua franca of the skateboarding world, an international language that has permitted 15-year-old Booker Mitchell to take his homemade travel show toSpain, Nicaragua, and the Brazilian Amazon. With the help of his filmmaker mom and the support of his dad, Mitchell scripts and stars in an unconventionalWeb video series that tracks its gregarious star as he navigates foreign lands by skateboarding and surfing with local kids.

Although she’s a documentarian, Brazil-born Tania Cypriano is far from a stage mom. “Ever since he was little, Booker kept journals. Wherever we traveled, I took videos. One day we realized we were documenting the world as a kid experiences it.”

“Travel shows for grown-ups have these really excited hosts who talk about museums,” says Booker. “Our motto is ‘Live Life Outside.’”

—By George W. Stone

THE INTERVIEW

National Geographic Traveler: Why is travel important?

Booker Mitchell: Travel expands our world and influences our lives. I am inspired by the people I meet and how they live. For instance, I love sleeping in hammocks even if I am in New York City.

NGT: Can you point to one trip or experience that ignited your curiosity about the world?

BM: I have been traveling since before I can remember and I am really lucky to have parents that take me everywhere, so I owe my first curiosity about traveling to them. But I think that I’m still living my first influential experience, and every trip adds to it.

NGT: Who is your hero and why?

BM: Anybody who can feel comfortable wherever they go without bringing five pieces of luggage with them.

NGT: Do you have a personal motto or mantra that embodies your approach to life and travel?

BM: Live life outside. So many kids spend their days inside playing video games and watching TV. "Booker Travels" shows kids how to get out of the house and experience the world.

NGT: What do you never leave home without when you travel?

BM: A skateboard or surfboard, a still camera, and a notepad.

NGT: Do you have a favorite travel book or film?

BM: The film Sipping Jetstreams by Taylor Steele.

NGT: What was your most surprising food experience on your travels?

BM: Eating a different fish I had never heard of at every meal while I was on a boat in the Amazon River, surrounded by jungle and perfectly still water.

NGT: What is the most beautiful place you’ve experienced while traveling?

BM: Death Valley, California. I liked the different colors of the desert, the dunes, the salt mines, and the rocks. There was something about the landscape that made me feel like I was the only person on Earth. There was no connection to anyone or anything.

NGT: Name three places that you’d like to visit before you die and why.

BM: Since I am 15, I hope to visit a lot more than three places before I die, but:

Indonesia. The water there is so perfectly blue, the jungle goes all the way to the beach, there are reefs, perfect waves, and good fish. It’s basically the Amazon surrounded by ocean.

Australia. It’s a massive island with both jungle and desert.

Japan. It’s so high tech, with so many crazy things you will never find in the U.S. The major cities there are very good for skating and many people are beginning to surf there, too. Plus, I’ve heard many crazy stories about the sushi and other exotic foods there; it’s definitely a must.

NGT: What's one place you’ve been to that you think everyone should visit?

BM: Barcelona, because it has the best of urban life—amazing food, incredible architecture, and a beach.

NGT: What’s next?

BM: Not sure yet but definitely some place that will warm me up during the cold New York winter.

Travelers of the Year: Paula Busey and Samwel Melami

Travelers of the Year: Paula Busey & Samwel Melami

A Maasai warrior and a Denver educator bring the Serengeti to the suburbs.

• Paula Busey & Samwel Melami
• Meet the Travelers of the Year

High-school librarian Paula Busey (left) was so impressed with Tanzanian wildlife guide Samwel Melami that she invited him to meet her students in Colorado and helped him found a Maasai owned and operated ecotourism company in his hometown of Arusha.

Photograph by Dana Romanoff

How did a Maasai warrior with a magnetic personality, a command of five languages, and aspirations to become an ecotourism leader in his nativeTanzania wind up teaching teens in the Rockies? Ask Paula Busey.

In 2009, when the 55-year-old librarian and her family headed out on safari in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, they found a friend in their guide, Samwel Melami Langidare Mollel, a 30-year-old university-educated wildlife expert. “It was magical to learn about his life—about growing up in a village of 65 people, about Maasai tradition,” she recalls. “As an educator, I wanted my students to have a first-person experience like this.”

Back home in Littleton, a Denver suburb haunted by a high school shooting and rattled by last summer’s gun violence in nearby Aurora, Busey saw an opportunity to give her students an eye-opening encounter. Through craft sales and fund drives, Busey raised enough money to bring Melami to the States.

Over five days, Melami taught some 1,500 ThunderRidge High students lessons in wildlife conservation, ethnobotany, tribal traditions, and African development. Those students returned the favor by raising funds to build a kitchen for a school near Arusha, where Melami lives.

The cultural exchange has been going on for three years now, and, happily, there’s no end in sight.

—By George W. Stone

THE INTERVIEW

National Geographic Traveler: Why is travel important?

Paula Busey: Traveling is transformative, expanding who we are and how we think and exist in the world. It’s learning at its experiential and visceral best, allowing you to see, touch, smell, taste, and hear a new culture.

Samwel Melami: It teaches us that we are all one family.

NGT: What inspired you to travel in the way that has resulted in your being chosen as a Traveler of the Year?

PB: When my family went on a safari in Tanzania, Samwel was our guide. He let us try brushing our teeth with a special woody plant, eat baobab seeds, visit a traditional Maasai cattle market, and meet his family. As a teacher I knew that meeting Samwel could change my students' lives.

NGT: Can you point to one trip or experience that ignited your curiosity about the world?

SM: When I traveled from Tanzania to Denver, Colorado, I was surprised to see that the place I’d dreamed about was so much different from what I’d imagined. I thought the U.S. was all covered by tarmac roads, with no open space. But there is so much open space!

NGT: Who is your hero and why?

PB: Samwel is my hero, because of his intelligence and knowledge, his endless compassion for all beings, his fearlessness and strength, and his ability to inspire American teenagers to expand their vision of themselves and their own sense of humanity.

Our students were utterly captivated hearing about growing up Maasai, surrounded by and knowing the behaviors of wild predators, understanding the medicinal properties of wild plants, and working to solve difficult issues facing his culture.

SM: My hero is my father, the healer in my village. He taught me so much about how plants can heal people, and his love, knowledge, and kindness helps so many.

NGT: Do you have a personal motto or mantra that embodies your approach to life and travel?

PB: "A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

SM: Traveling is my life and my livelihood.

NGT: What is the most beautiful place you’ve experienced while traveling?

SM: The Rocky Mountains. No one at home would believe there was that much snow!

NGT: Do you have a favorite travel book or film?

PB: My favorite films are The Year of Living Dangerously and Mountains of the Moon, and my favorite book is State of Wonder by Ann Patchett.

SM: My favorite film is Hatari with John Wayne, which was filmed in northern Tanzania and Arusha, where I live.

NGT: Name one place you’ve been to that you think everyone should visit.

PB: The Anasazi cliff dwellings at Bandelier in New Mexico and Mesa Verde in Colorado. You can experience, on a visceral level, who we were as humans and how much our lives could become if we could bring that unity with the land back into our lives.

SM: All travelers should visit Gombe Stream National Park in northwest Tanzania and see the chimpanzees. It is extraordinary.

NGT: What’s next?

SM: I am planning to start a safari camp in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to give my fellow Maasai a good place to work and allow them to benefit from tourism. I hope it will inspire more Maasai to preserve nature in this area while preserving our culture.

PB: I will be traveling with students to London, Paris, Spain, and Morocco next summer. But I'm always yearning for Africa.