Curiosity, Travel and Change
Trying to understand a huge, messy, sprawling city like Bangkok as a tourist is like being the proverbial blind man with the elephant- you might figure out an ear or the trunk, but you’ll never get the whole thing. And a elephant seems an apt metaphor— for elephant imagery is everywhere. This is about one …
The Anti-Atlas mountains stretch across southern Morocco, the last mountain range before the Sahara Desert. It’s a stark landscape of imposing ochre granite mountains scoured by wind and sand, rocky soils scattered with argan trees and terraced slopes that once held fields of barley. It is the land of the Amazigh people, better known to …
On the only sunny day of my six days in Newfoundland, I drove down the Irish Loop from St. Johns to Ferryland, a town founded in 1621. Ferryland sits halfway down the east coast of the Avalon Peninsula, nestled, like so many Newfoundland towns, in a cove framed by rocky cliffs. In mid-October, I parked …
Sometimes you have to try out a travel experience because..well, just because it's there. So it was for me spending a night at the East Brother Light Station, perched on a rock where the San Pablo Bay spills into the San Francisco Bay. Last year, we had spent two nights on a tugboat in Port …
Continue reading "A Night in A Lighthouse in the San Francisco Bay"
Me in the hot springs There is something disconcerting about that helplessness you feel when you learn you will spend the next two days without access to email or social media. You don’t want to believe you are one of those people so hopelessly addicted to your phone that its loss causes anxiety. But you …
We arrived at Caleta Tortel and parked at the edge of this tiny town near the end of the Carretera Austral, having driven another 12 miles on a dirt side road till we reached the porous coastline of Patagonia. We strapped on backpacks with our stuff for two days, and started walking. Walking to our …
Continue reading "Chile Part 2: Caleta Tortel, the end of the road."
Swept Away Inn, Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, BC In the late afternoon, the sea-chilled air rushes up the Alberni Inlet from the Pacific Ocean, and when it meets the warm inland air in Port Alberni, fierce gusts of thermal wind blow across Harbour Quay. Moored to the pier is a 70 year old tugboat, now …
Continue reading "Two Nights on A Tugboat: Port Alberni, BC"
A weaver in Teotitlan del Valle gives thanks before beginning work I am in awe of people who can make something out of nothing—salvagers and re-purposers and cultivators, dumpster divers and weavers, farmers coaxing food from the harshest earth, entrepreneurs finding possibility in a world of scarcity. On my recent trip to Mexico I saw …
Capulalpám de Mendez is a pueblo mágico perched high in the Sierra Norte, reached by a curving, ascending two-hour drive from Oaxaca City. In these mountains, live people whose original language is Zapotec, not Spanish, who fight to preserve their traditions, and who live with a profound understanding of nature. View toward the villages Capulalpám …
Continue reading "The Sierra Norte: Walking in the land of the Zapotec"
I've always associated the Eastern Shore of Maryland with the brilliant magenta of crape myrtles which line the roads and the river banks. They aren't quite ready to show us their stuff yet, but the sailboats are. A warm Maryland send-off from Katie and Jim in Cambridge complete with fresh-off-the-boat crabs. If you come to …
Old and On the Way 