As a professional travel writer, people often ask me about the tools of my trade. I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about my notebook. “Your notebook?” you might ask. “What the hell for? Isn’t one piece of paper as good as the next?” Au contraire, mon ami. Ask a craftsman who works with wood if one hammer or chisel is as good as another. Ask an...
As a writer it’s easy to rant about the decline of the English language, the erosion of literature, and the dumbing down of pop culture. Some embrace what they see as the “changing, dynamic nature” of the language. They adopt it and try to harness its supposed vibrancy, but this usually comes off as overly topical and is completely dated by the time next season’s TV...
Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc of outtakes and curios. This incident took place in Panama’s Darien Gap… Banana trees and low bushy plants lined the dirt path that led beyond the village’s last tambo. Jungle pathways were never entirely clear, no matter how recently someone had...
During my time with them, I learned that the Embera of Panama’s Darien Gap lived in harmony with their surroundings. They didn’t try to be “close to Nature”—the idea would never have occurred to them. They were Nature, an inextricable segment of that community of life. It’s misguided to revere them for this, or to demonize them. They’re simply being what they...
Surely everyone realizes, at some point, that they are capable of living a far better life than the one they have chosen. What usually stops them is fear of the sacrifices involved.
It’s necessary to be alone to become fully aware of the way that music recalls the past, provides a soundtrack to the present, and gives hope for the future. For those of us who travel alone, music fills those empty nights closed in by the walls of concrete rooms. And it entrances us on long journeys by bus or rail, occupying the conscious mind and allowing insight to float up from...
Borders signify change and a new beginning. They’re a crossing over into unknown territory, evoking feelings of possibility that contain great hope as well as great fear. But borders are also a closing off. When we enter new terrain, we’re closing off what came before both physically and philosophically. We can never go back. Nature allows no birth without a corresponding death...
I came across a quote last week that I want to share with you. It’s taken from a letter that Charles Darwin—the Father of Evolution—wrote at the end of his life. He said: “Up to the age of 30, or beyond it, poetry gave me great pleasure. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out...
Certain skies have the power to sharpen eyesight. It is the map maker who actually creates the world, and in a landscape devoid of features, cartography turns inward. Far below the walls of Dier Mar Moussa, the sands stretched out like a hazy veil beyond the perpetual present; beyond even remembering. Such a landscape brought to mind the Temptations of St. Anthony. Exiled voices. Delirious days...
Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc of outtakes and curios. This incident took place in the Petén region of Guatemala… I stumbled out of bed at four thirty to prepare for the last long distance bus ride of the journey: the hard packed jungle track through the eastern Petén to the...
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