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Matt Green walked across America, then walked down every street in NYC. This is his story.
What you discover when you walk down every single street in New York City (encore)
Notes on my (never published) first travel book, part II: The author is a character
When teaching my creative writing classes in Paris, I typically begin my memoir-themed craft lecture by writing these words on the whiteboard: Author | Character / Narrator The vertical line between “Author” and “Character/Narrator” is in part meant to underscore the fact that – in analyzing a person’s writing – we’re not talking about the…
In places like Uripiv, Vanuatu, “locavore” isn’t a lifestyle choice; it’s the only way to eat
Although the word “locavore” has something of an upscale-foodie connotation in the US, to “eat foods grown locally whenever possible” (as Merriam-Webster defines it) is pretty much the only option for people who live in the outer islands of Vanuatu. After the 16-hour ferry ride from Efate to Malekula, Kiki and I boarded one more…
What’s the Best Way to Explore Kenya? Join a Local Hiking Club.
Rolf sought an authentic experience, and found it in Lets Drift, “an exuberant Kenyan-centered enterprise” of people living in and near Nairobi.
Notes on my (never published) first travel book, part I: Pilgrims in a Sliding World
For almost as long as I’ve been making my living as a writer, I’ve been telling folks about the role that failure has played in my development as an author. Specifically, my failure to write an insightful and coherent book about my first vagabonding experience – an eight-month van journey around North America undertaken when…
The secret to adventure is to travel in such a way that it finds you
Our arrival in the South Pacific island-nation of Vanuatu just so happened to coincide with Air Vanuatu, the nation’s flagship airline, going out of business. This meant that we had no easy way to travel domestically from island to island, apart from taking industrial ferries that require passengers share the boat with cargo. Years ago,…
3 key insights from “Dervla Murphy’s Laws of Travel”
1) Unplugged travel is the best travel Abandon your mobile phone, laptop, iPod, and all such links to family, friends, and work colleagues. Concentrate on where you are and derive your entertainment from immediate stimuli, the tangible world around you. Increasingly, in hostels and guesthouses one sees “independent” travelers eagerly settling down in front of…
A history and future of digital and biological technology, with Jane Metcalfe
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“We need positive visions of how all this technology gets deployed, because what we visualize is what we build.” –Jane Metcalfe In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Jane talk about the pioneering work she did with Wired during the dawn of the “digital revolution” (3:00); how and why Jane’s professional focus shifted away from digital…
“Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology” (Oxford): Introduction essay
Since remote antiquity, for all kinds of reasons, people have left home and hit the road. Couriers and diplomats, merchants and worshippers crisscrossed the Mesopotamian triangle well before 3000 BC. Even tourists, travelling for pleasure, left graffiti on the Pyramids by 1500 BC. Very early in history, then, travel and writing converged. Homer’s Odyssey, the…
Bicycling across the USA (with no money or food) looking for human connection
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Filmmaker Daniel Troia talks about his experience of biking across the USA with no food or money
Of Travel, by Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country, before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel. That young men travel under some tutor, or grave servant, I allow well; so that he be…