My editors at National Geographic made it clear to me that they did not want a personal reminiscence about Jan Morris after she died on November 20, 2020. They wanted a piece about Jan’s deep and abiding connection to her adopted home, Wales. She was half Welsh and...
This essay began forming as I took long walks in April 2020, after being diagnosed with Covid the month before. I focused on the silver linings of the pandemic and how this terrible wave of disease might lead to a more humane future. Here’s an excerpt: This month of...
I first heard Sarah McLachlan’s voice in 1990. I was teaching at an outdoor education school in the Santa Cruz Mountains and my housemate had a cassette tape of her first album. It was love at first blush. Her work was raw then; it wasn’t until four years later, when...
As a whitewater raft guide for 30 years, I’m very familiar with the power of moving water, and I have a tremendous respect for it. On Dec. 30, 2019, my wife and I, while hiking the Kalalau trail along Kauai’s Napali Coast, stopped for lunch on the rocks above...
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown how risky it is for people to go cruising. But even after the pandemic eases, there are reasons to reconsider cruising due to the damage ships do to oceans and their inhabitants, including colliding with whales and dolphins. One of the...
