The air flavored my lips with the slightest hint of the sea as I watched the violence below. It had been building, I noticed, each of the three times I looked at Manarola Bay throughout the day. But the chaotic fervor was exponentially greater tonight. Gone was the calm swimming area of tourism photos and … Continued
We had hiked for seven hours, miles from any passable road, the trail, the only way in or out. A morning spent drifting between deserted beaches and smothering jungle canopy. One leaving us exposed to the merciless tropical sun and the other to stifling humidity. Though caked in sand and sweat, it was impossible to … Continued
On Easter Sunday, 2013, my husband and I began our 110ish-mile trek from Cleveland, Ohio, south to New Philadelphia on the old Ohio-Erie Canal towpath trail. I was writing a book about an 1840’s mule driver, and wanted to replicate his journey. Somewhat. I’m fifty years old. I hadn’t backpacked for twenty-five years. And I was … Continued
I stepped off my first international flight at 4:39, along with nineteen other visitors from our small town. We sleepily boarded transpiration that would take us from the city to the jungle. Most of the travelers slept peacefully on the trolley. I sat in the front bench inspecting the strange landscape out the window. It … Continued
In my just concluded undergraduate life, every year I had the privilege to visit a local community not to far from my university campus. We usually went to different communities as part of my Christian fellowship’s evangelical outreach, back then in school. Each year, we spent about four days with the villagers in a different … Continued
“Santa Maria, piena di grazia, il Signore è con te. Tu sei benedetta fra le donnee benedetto è il frutto del tuo seno, Gesú. Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte. Amen.” Nights here were always like this. Lazy, hot and languid. She looked out onto a … Continued
Grazie, Villa Lante, Grazie, Bagnaia! Esther Kane Meyers I drove straight from the Rome airport to Bagnaia and the Villa Lante. I had not called ahead, but was confident that the grand Renaissance-era Villa would greet me warmly. I passed through her towering iron gates and immediately found Rosella, the art curator. The Villa, my … Continued
We pay the ferryman with a coin into his mouth and he whizzes us across the Strait of Gibraltar, across waters of indigo and cerulean collapsing into jade, a white foam skirt trailing behind us. At the crest of every wave I release a breath—exhaling my Western anxieties, the weights I carry at home in … Continued
“Welcome to Tibet״ a monk wearing a dark rouge colored robe greeted us, at an alley outside Lābǔléng Sì in the city of Xiàhé. It was early afternoon, hundreds of monks just finished their prayer and lunch ritual, so most of the monastery’s streets were deserted. The low earth buildings that make up the monastery’s … Continued
A World Away Veronica Thompson Rolling hills and vast plains lay stretched out like fragments on a canvas before me. Our destination was Mara Land in Western Kenya – the heart of the Maasai people and the home to all of the biggest predators in Africa. Uneven dirt tracks and collapsed bridges provided only small … Continued