By Carol J. Arnold
An old gypsy teaches a retired American visitor that getting lost is often the best way to find what you’re looking for.
It came out of nowhere, a horrendous crash like something had dropped from the sky, shattering the passenger window only a few feet from my face. “It’s okay,” my husband Andy [...]
By Rosie Cohan
One man’s efforts to preserve traditional culture as tourism changes his community.
Pink skid marks faded to purple in the blackening sky as lights popped on across Goreme, the stony Turkish village below me. I had checked into my room and then saw my friend, Ali, sitting alone on the terrace of the hotel he [...]
By Marianne Bohr
Mother Nature always wins.
The Tour du Mont Blanc, affectionately known to its devotees as the TMB, is one of the world’s classic long-distance footpaths and is a capstone event on our European itinerary. Experiencing the Alpine wilderness in the presence of the dramatic ice-capped peaks is the proverbial icing on our backpacking, sabbatical-year cake. [...]
By Lola Åkerström
The winding road to Ville Montetiffi snakes along rolling hills with lush views of green vineyards, fields with grazing sheep, and farmland with old sheds and villas. Past the occasional cyclist training and struggling uphill. Past a car or two, far and few between. In the distance, you can just make out San Marino [...]
By Rosemary Hanrahan
The healing power of being present.
“Give me five dollars, Blan.” A young Haitian woman, unknown to me, asked in perfect English and extended her hand.
I had received many such requests during my five months living in the mountainous rural community of Fondwa in Haiti as I made my daily journey up the mountain to teach [...]
By Donna Lawrence
A view of another woman’s life.
The road to the Maasai village is gouged with deep holes and littered with rocks. It is barely a road at all. Our Land Cruiser slows to a crawl to tip and sway through a gully. The Maasai don’t need to keep their road in good condition. They [...]
By Anne Sigmon
A weight of awe, not easy to be borne,
Fell suddenly upon my spirit
—From “The Monument” by William Wordsworth
At nearly one in the morning, the night was black around me—not even a sliver of moon to hang onto. Standing on the damp, foggy grounds of my English manor house hotel, I felt adrift, like [...]
By Bonnie Morris
Notes from a Woman Backpacker.
Food and drink will tempt you constantly—crepes on the streets of Paris, smorgasbord in Scandinavia, beer in Germany… —“Planning European Travel,” Harvard Student Agencies; Let’s Go Europe 1982
When I began to travel, as a young woman of twenty back in 1981, I traveled cheap. I had no trust fund, no [...]
By MJ Pramik
Seeing the world anew.
When I hit sixty, my eldest daughter said, ‘Sixty is the new forty.’ These words spawned in me a wanderlust the likes of which I couldn’t believe, and weeks after my birthday I challenged myself to go alone to Antarctica. After cavorting with flocks of frenzied penguins and climbing out [...]
By Megan McNamer
Taking Communion in a karaoke bar.
In the late Seventies, when all of Taiwan was under construction, there was a bar in the capital city of Taipei called the Club Kotobuki. It was a place to go for Japanese businessmen missing the home office. It may still be there, I don’t know. I haven’t [...]
