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…
I’ve said before that one of the reasons I named my podcast Deviate (as opposed to, say, Vagabonding) was that I wanted the creative freedom to veer away from the travel issues I’ve covered as a journalist for the past 25+ years, and explore other intellectual themes. Since my interest in cinema and screenwriting is…
1) On the edifying mission of pre-tourism travel Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and its fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of the judgment. 2) On the aesthetic compromises of modern travel I don’t want to sound too gloomy, but there’s…
Between 2013 and 2019 I conducted occasional interviews with my mother, Alice Potts, about various aspects of her life. I did this out of the conviction that once the people you love are gone, you won’t have the chance to ask them the kind of simple questions about their lives that you can (but often…
Note: This encore episode is dedicated to the memory of Alice Potts, who died on August 20, 2025, aged 81. “In America aging is often seen as an insult rather than an inevitable human process. We don’t celebrate getting older; we ‘fight’ age by pretending to be young.” –Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate Rolf…
When my mother, Alice Potts, died last month, part of the process of working through my grief came in digging into the archive of digital files I have collected over the years to document her life. This ritual was in part an endeavor to eulogize her in a way that honored who she was, but…
My mother, Alice Potts, died peacefully last month in her memory-care assisted-living apartment in Salina, Kansas. She was 81 years old, and had in recent years been dealing with dementia (which was compounded of late by cerebral hemorrhages). Mom grew up the oldest of six on a farm near the town of Aliceville in eastern…
1) On the way trails have made us what we are Trails can be found in virtually every part of this vast, strange, mercurial, partly tamed, but still shockingly wild world of ours. Throughout the history of life on Earth, we have created pathways to guide our journeys, transmit messages, refine chaos, and preserve wisdom.…
1) The better the villain, the better the hero The better the villain, the better the hero. The better the villain, the better the plot, because the villain is the one who’s usually driving the plot. I was very, very, very lucky to inherit [Hannibal Lecter]. I could not invent him to save my life.…
Writing-craft lessons from Rolf’s would-be first book, ‘Pilgrims in a Sliding World.”
1) If a phrase comes to you easily, look at it with deep suspicion If a phrase comes to you easily, look at it with deep suspicion — it’s probably one of the innumerable clichés which have woven their way so tightly into the fabric of travel writing that it takes a special effort not…
