A friend at my hostel told me about a way up to the fortress above Kotor. There was a main route and another trail; I took the other trail. It was a hot evening in July, and I had a bottle of water and a fairly casual idea of how long this would take. I had gone up for a view of the town at sunset. Instead, I ended up above the fortress, still climbing.
Kotor sits between the water and mountains that rise almost straight behind it. From the streets, the climb looked like a reasonable way to get my bearings. On the trail, with the heat still hanging around and the water disappearing faster than expected, it felt less like a clever local tip. I’d missed a turn and was walking up the mountain itself. What I thought would take an hour took two.
Partway up I met a man from Estonia who repaired coffee machines for a living. I had never met anyone from Estonia before, which I realize says more about the limits of my own travels than it does about Estonia. We started walking together. The fortress I’d meant to reach was now part of the view, and so was the town, tucked against the bay. We made it up in time to watch the light change.
It’s tempting to turn that moment into proof that there are no wrong turns in life. I don’t think I believe that. Sometimes a wrong turn is a wrong turn, and sometimes you run out of water because you didn’t pay attention. But I was glad I kept walking that evening. I had set out to see Kotor from one spot and found myself somewhere I couldn’t have planned, talking with a stranger about his life as the sun went down.
I was carrying something less scenic up the mountain too. I’d lost my job in a wave of tech layoffs. It had been a good job, with people I cared about, and losing it unsettled more than my finances. I had spent a lot of time building an identity around what I did for work. Then the work was gone, and I had to sit with the fact that I was still here.
Travel didn’t make that uncertainty disappear. I could be looking out over one of the most beautiful places I’d seen in Europe and still have no neat answer about what came next. It did give me some room to think, and occasionally put me beside someone I would never otherwise have met. On the way up I was annoyed at myself for missing the fortress. From the top, I could see the fortress clearly. I could also see how much more there was above it.