Human beings are more alike than unlike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure. It is necessary, especially for Americans, to see other lands and experience other cultures. The American, living in this vast country…
(an excerpt) Why is travel so exciting? Partly because it triggers the thrill of escape, from the constriction of the daily, the job, the boss, the parents. ‘A great part of the pleasure of travel,’ says Freud, ‘lies in the fulfillment of . . . early wishes to escape the family and especially the father.’…
An audio excerpt from the introduction of Rolf’s new book, The Vagabond’s Way
Of the many pleasurable travel moments I found amid my August 2022 journey through Norway, I got a curious thrill out of the afternoon I spent dozing in this hammock, alongside a forest-fringed lake not far from Sørumsand. Over the years I’ve come to believe that the multifarious sights and activities a new place offers…
Travel-TV host Ernest White II on the nuances of Kansas, and what home reveals about travel
Has anyone ever considered the philosophy of travel? It might be worth while. What is life but a form of motion and a journey through a foreign world? Moreover locomotion- the privilege of animals- is perhaps the key to intelligence. The roots of vegetables (which Aristotle says are their mouths) attach them fatally to the…
This image is the result of a free-writing exercise my wife Kiki led near the Louvre, during the 2022 Paris Writing Workshops. Kiki is a classically trained actress, and she drew on her stage skills to create an exercise where students lingered near the Louvre, attempting to describe people in their journals without using adjectives,…
The joys and challenges of living and working in Antarctica, with Karen Pszonka
Kevin Harrison on storytelling from places and people we don’t typically hear about.
“Good Digs in Timbuktu” By Nicholas D. Kristof (an excerpt) It was the slow train to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso in West Africa, and it had just stopped at the border of the Ivory Coast. Among the mango sellers alongside the train, I found two Canadians who were headed in the same direction.…
The life and disappearance of Father Paolo Dall’Oglio and his travelers’ sanctum in Syria
