TobyIt’s 2009, and I’m eighteen. Paris is home for the year. It’s a chilly night in early winter. Ten or eleven o’clock. I’ve just gotten […]
Category: Europe
In Defense of Aimless Wandering, Revisited
I’m riding from Sweden to Finland on a ferry named Grace, pondering over aimless wandering. I’ll come back to that. Grace is probably ten stories […]
“Smile As You’re Dancing.” Thoughts for Those Seeking to Rewild
I first published this piece well over a year ago on Rebelle Society. Since, I have gone much deeper into my exploration of rewilding. Back […]
Struggle: A Travel Manifesto
If you travel (or live), where the mother tongue is not your mother tongue, you will struggle. The mundane will become complex and challenging, and […]
Some Stuff I Liked in Portugal: A Rough and Tumble Guide
Portugal has made it onto just about every top travel list this year, and with good reason. I loved the month I spent there in […]
Give Me Loneliness (a poem for travelers and dreamers)
Sagres, Portugal, early May. This past weekend, after a few wonderful weeks of travel and adventure with friends and family, I gave myself the gift of […]
When You Don’t Want to be Friendly and Open and Curious
That’s okay. It’s normal. Go ahead and hermit. I stare resolutely out the window of my Uber at the windy Cape Town day, quite […]
The Rough and Wrinkled Side of Adventure
Sunday, 23 April. Porto, Portugal. Welcome to the world of unplanned adventure. It’s messy. It’s unphotogenic. It’s wild-ish. It’s kind-hearted French tourists warning you that […]
Some Things I Like (About Travel)
Lisbon, Portugal. Saturday afternoon, somewhere far from the city center. I like this cafe, edged in fading sunlight, that flanks a nondescript park. I […]
The Strangeness
“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” — Robert Louis Stevenson Sorry, Robert Stevenson, on two counts. First, […]