By Marcia DeSanctis There was danger, even in the presence of angels. February is not the ideal time for a road trip to northern France, but the moodiness of the sea, wind, and sky appeals to a certain breed of loner like me, drawn to the echoing voids of the off-season. Coastal Normandy is famous […]

By Marcie Kaplan Elder Travel Bronze Winner in the Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards The Himalayas helped her find intimacy, faith, and reassurance. I had my first tingly feeling when we were hiking up through woods from a 10,000-foot Himalayan pass to a monastery, and we passed soldiers in camouflage. I expected surprises in Bhutan, a […]

By Tom Miller The best guitar maker in Cuba. Three events—baseball, Pope Jon Paul’s visit, and the Elián González case—exposed Cuba to the American public far beyond the embargo. Yet it was the improbable success of a handful of aging musicians that exposed a Cuba few knew and expanded the country’s audiences far beyond its […]

By Erin Byrne Little by little, his spirit expanded in harmony with the cathedral.—Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame She’s had many lives and here was the burnt offering of another. Notre Dame’s lace spire sizzled and crumbled as it fell, and the gigantic hole it created became a cauldron. Flames, golden to orange […]

By Chase Nelson A modern-day rescue mission raises questions of life and death. With her husband looking on, we took turns pumping her heart for her, pushing blood to her organs, to her extremities, hoping for a gasp to bring her back, tearful and afraid, from wherever she was now. Technically, they were called compressions. […]

By Amanda Castleman Navigating grief with the Okavango Delta’s last generation of Bushmen hunter-gatherers. When he was 15, Ditshebo “Dicks” Tsima took his spear into the bush. Hunting was still legal in Botswana’s Okavango Delta then, so he could follow an ancient coming-of-age tradition, practiced for around 200,000 years by his people: the Bushmen. Most […]

By Nancy Bartley Funny Travel Story Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards I never asked to look like a female wrestler. You know the blondes in bikinis who toss each other around the ring or wallow wantonly through mud. But then again, maybe my problem simply was a matter of hair color – […]

By Ashley Seashore Doing Good or the Kindness of Strangers Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards Half of my money is in my right shoe. My passport is in my left. The other half of my money is in an envelope in my underwear, and my credit cards, family photos, and one traveler’s […]

By Susan Bloch Destination Story Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards I’m traveling into unknown territory with a man I just met. His name is Karl, my safari guide here in Namibia, and we’re driving along a coast shaped by death and diamonds. A coast where shifting sand dunes bury secrets, mysteries, and […]

By Maryah Converse Culture and Ideas Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards When I tell people that I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jordan, the response is usually predictable: “Wow. How was that?” How am I supposed to answer that in few enough words that their eyes don’t glaze over? Overwhelming. Amazing. […]