On the Road
Who Gets to Travel to “Find Themselves”?
The spirit of manifest destiny has been rebranded into the travelogue.
I Will Always Be Able to Find My Father in the West
Out on the road and in the great outdoors my dad and I discovered we were more like each other than we believed.
Bodh Gaya Sells “Enlightenment” to Tourists—It Sold Me a Philly Cheesesteak
My heart is set on the Philly cheesesteak—the only one, I’m certain, to be found in India.
What Public Bathrooms Taught Me
The problem, of course, is that the public toilet involves doing the private in public.
Finding Biodiversity (and Chocolate) in the Forests of Ecuador
As a person who spends a lot of her time reading, writing, and teaching about endangered creatures and environments, I craved something hopeful.
Shocked Quartz: Traveling with a Chronic Illness
Will the vertigo again become acute? Will the stress of this, or some root cause that spurs it, end my life before it might otherwise end?
In Search of Wonder in Iseyin
It’s Nigeria, after all. Hope is what keeps many alive. In plethora of sufferings and fears, prayers abound.
A Nigerian’s Field Guide to Survival in Positano
We pass other boats and, from each one, there is the double-take, a stare. Two boats full of only black people is apparently a rare sight.
Facing My Fears in the World’s Largest Sand Desert
We were three single Americans with a whiskey handle. What reception would we wake to if we fall asleep on the wrong sand?
On the Haunting Beauty of Roadside Crosses in New Mexico
The roadside cross is a jarring balance of the emotional poles, internal and external, surely an action by and for the remaining soul—not the one who has departed.