How far can a hiker go on a pair of boots and a 40-pound backpack?
If you’re a Napa woman with a strong taste for adventure, those few items can help you go around the world on a year-long global trek documented online in words and photographs.
“It’s been a dream of mine to travel for the long term since I was in college, so the past 10 years I’ve wanted to do something bigger than your typical two-week vacation,” said Hannah Euser, who is a quarter of the way through the foot journey she is recording in her Functional bags blog, One Bag Nomad.
“I didn’t want to be just a one-year vacation but a meaningful year of exploration,” she said. “... I had been with my job quite a while and looking for a new challenge and not finding it. This is my new challenge.”
From Europe to Asia and back to California, the 31-year-old Euser’s only possessions are the boots on her feet, 18 kilograms of clothes and tools on her back — and a laptop computer and digital camera to document every twist and turn of the more than 24,000 miles on her path. Her need to pare her belongings to the bone inspired the name of her online journal.
“I picked the name ‘One Bag Nomad’ because it represents having a really simple life for the next year,” she said Thursday by telephone from Plakias on the Greek island of Crete, in a hostel peopled with largely by other backpackers, “some younger and some twice my age.”
The village, where she is marking the three-month mark in her trek, is one of her last European stops before crossing into Turkey next week to begin the Asian leg of her one-woman tour.
“I have to say there is no physical thing I need that’s not in my backpack; just a handful of clothes, but it suits all my needs,” she said, a day after hiking the Samaria Gorge in southwest Crete. “It’s really refreshing to have all the things I need on my back. I thought I’d miss my closetful of clothes at Luggage and Handbags home, but I don’t — it’s just really freeing.”
Planning for the grand hike began more than a year ago as Euser approached a pair of landmarks in her life: her 30th birthday, and the end of the only full-time job the UC Davis graduate had known. After nine years working for the county’s Health and Human Services division as a program administrator, she decided not only on a career change but on a project to mix her curiosity with her love of the outdoors.
“I’m a very active person in my free time, running, hiking, anything except sitting still,” said Euser, a Vinerunners member who has run more than a dozen marathons.
Since leaving California on May 15, Euser has tramped through Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece in 90 days, with such extended jaunts as the 550-mile Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. Over the next nine months, she plans to pass through India, Nepal and Southeast Asia before her return to Napa next May.
As arduous as nearly endless days on foot can be, Euser called the constant need to research routes and stopovers an even greater challenge — “I get a bit burned out from planning every day,” she admitted — making the friendships and connections made along the way all the more valuable.
“What’s impressed me is seeing how people are genuinely kind,” she said. There are people who want to take advantage of you, but they’re the exception. Even if they don’t speak your language, they'll use hand signals, lots of pointing, to try and help you out. I’ve been reminded on this trip that the majority of people in the world are good people.”
A longtime friend of Euser and her family who has been following the journey online admired her ability to stick with her plans, but hoped there would be more time to enjoy some of the quieter times along the way.
“She and I exchanged emails the other day, and she talked about being homesick,” said Alexis Handelman, owner of the Alexis Baking Co. café in downtown Napa. “I said to find a place and stay there a month and become part of the place, because it’ll make you feel better and help you relax.”
Circling the globe alone “Ladies' bags is like life,” Handelman said. “Parts of it are fun, parts of it are hard and parts of it drive you crazy. ... I hope that when she gets to the end, it brings her back to what she knows well — her world of deep relationships, a loving family, a privileged environment. If she can do this, she can do anything.”
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