By Anna Vodicka
On Peleliu, the roads are paved with coral—a once-living thing, a hardy animal. The coral came from the inland ridges and valleys of this two-by-six-mile speck among specks in the island nation of Palau, in western Micronesia, an almost invisible scene in the shadow of bigger acts in the Pacific, where land itself is [...]
By Katherine Jamieson
A tropical love story in Guyana.
The one-room schoolhouse rang with the din of teenage girls’ voices in the humid afternoon air. Someone had erased the sentences with their adjectives and nouns underlined from the black wooden slab we used for a chalkboard and scrawled out a rough schedule for the upcoming concert: [...]
By James Michael Dorsey
A magical day in Mali.
Hippos surfaced with wiggling ears as the boat man poled our dhow past the submerged herd. We were both tense, expecting a bluff charge, while only feet away white pelicans with long golden beaks floated in the shallows casually scooping minnows in their great fleshy pouches. On the [...]
By Glenda Reed
“When the sea is calm, every ship has a good captain.”
—Sailing proverb
I watched the sleeping ocean from a corner of the cockpit. In the deep darkness, blind waves broke and collapsed in rhythmic, drawn-out hisses, luring me to sleep as they misted me with spray. Even in sleep, the ocean swell rolled forward, [...]
By Lance Mason
A lesson in southern Africa, circa 1988.
In Africa, we are all children. Everything is new, and everything is old. The sapling sprouting among the creepers is new; the forest, old. Though the baby in the kaross sling is new, his tribe is old. The dawn’s breeze swirls the dust over the Magadigadi pans [...]
By Mario Kaiser
Most people dream of spending their honeymoon on exotic beaches. My American bride and I opted for a road trip through the land of the ayatollahs.
We raced through the darkness and didn’t see it coming. Mehdi sat erect behind the wheel, honking slower cars out of his way. But one [...]
By Erin Byrne
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground,
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
—John O’Donohue, poem “For the Traveler”
Stone apostles frowned down over their curly beards, and I withered. Again and again, I had flown from the U.S. to France in [...]
By Katherine Jamieson
The neighbors might talk—but it will be worth it.
The teenage girl you live with, the younger one with the jutting chin who rarely smiles, is laughing at America’s Funniest Home Videos. A kitten falls off a window ledge onto the back of a large dog. A small dog runs so fast it [...]
By Amy Gigi Alexander
In Paris, the discovery of Africa on the outskirts of the city assuages sudden grief.
Women stand above me, brightly colored boubou dresses blending into an African origami screen blocking my view. Hands, like undecided hummingbirds, hover over my heart, swiftly moving to my eyes, covering them with damp palms. Children tied to [...]
by James Michael Dorsey
The smoke of wood fires dulls the sunrise, silhouetting the spires of Angkor Wat as hazy apparitions.
The incomparable beauty of these temples, the soul of the Khmer nation, are a surreal backdrop for the tale of horror I have come to record.
I see Pan approaching, fingering his prayer beads, his saffron [...]
