My favorite writing teacher from my college days, memoirist Laurel Lee, died of pancreatic cancer last week in Oregon. She was 58 years old. Laurel was perhaps best known for her 1977 book Walking Through the Fire, which was a Christian-themed account of her simultaneous struggle with Hodgkin’s disease, a dangerous pregnancy, and the fact…
Last month, while I was driving down the Mississippi River on a magazine assignment, I had a curious experience in Rosedale, Mississippi. As I was eating lunch in a place called Leo’s Market, a waitress mentioned that Rosedale is the place where the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange…
Friends and vagabonders, After four months of living out of a Land Rover, I have completed the San Francisco-to-Tierra del Fuego leg of the Drive Around the World expedition. It was an amazing experience across 13 countries, and I wish my expedition teammates luck as they continue this spring through Australia, Southeast Asia, India, China,…
The desert coast of Peru is as gorgeous as it is baffling.
When Rolf picks up a traditional, skirt-like lungi in Myanmar, he has no idea the fashion faux pas that will ensue. A meditation on “going native.”
Friends and vagabonders, New Year’s 2004 finds me in Peru, where I am roughly halfway through my drive across the Americas on the Land Rover-supported “Drive Around the World” expedition. Since departing from San Francisco in early November of 2003, we have traveled overland through southern California, the Baja peninsula, mainland Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador,…
From the shores of a Thailand resort town, Rolf explores what happens when you mix rich men, elephants, and polo gear.
My nephew, Cedar, who is four years old and lives on a farm in Kansas, wrote a book for me yesterday. Since he didn’t know how to mail it to me as I make my way through Central America, his mother (my sister) transposed it into an email. I guess I’ll have to wait a…
Friends and vagabonders, Fall promises to be an exciting season for me this year, as I will be departing to drive across the Americas as part of a Land Rover-supported expedition that will eventually drive around planet Earth along lines of longitude. The name of this expedition (and nonprofit organization) is “Drive Around the World”…
I’ve covered a lot of ground in Asia and North America since my last serious round of blog updates. My return home started in my jungle hometown (now former jungle hometown) of Ranong, where I moved out of my apartment and headed for Bangkok, where — in addition to scoring a cheap one-way China Air…
Book Review: As David Tomory’s A Season in Heaven reveals, the wanderers of the 1960s and 1970s were creative and intrepid — but they also tended to be petty, competitive, self-ghettoizing, and self-deluding. In short, they had the same charms and weaknesses as any self-conscious, authenticity-seeking counterculture movement of the last half-century.
