Backpack Nation Closes

Travel writer Brad Newsham has announced that he is shuttering Backpack Nation, the organization he founded on Sept. 11, 2002 to spread money and goodwill around the globe. “Today Backpack Nation consists mostly of me sitting here tapping at a keyboard—and not even so much of that any more,” he wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “I’ve proven to my own complete satisfaction that creating an organization is neither my strong-suit or my passion. And I’m letting go of that self-chosen responsibility.”

Newsham wrote that financial pressures have him driving his cab more than ever these days. But there’s good news for fans of Newsham’s work. He is busy writing tales about his cab. “And I do have in mind a globe-circling trip that will, I fancy, result in a book that will transform forever the foreign policies of the United States and the rest of the so-called developed countries,” he humbly wrote. “Despite Backpack Nation’s mothballing, I haven’t lost even a gram of my enthusiasm for the idea of travelers democratizing our world.”

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