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near Roan Mountain, Tennessee
To be immersed in a foreign world, one doesn’t necessarily need to leave the country. If you’re American, for example, you could go to parts of Miami. Even better, you could take a hike on the Appalachian Trail.
Completed in 1937, the 2175-mile long Appalachian Trail stretches from Georgia to Maine. Many people, myself included, know the trail primarily through day hikes or weekend backpacking excursions. I took the picture above, for instance, in early December while on a day hike with friends in northeast Tennessee.
Others, however, know the trail because they have hiked the whole darned thing. Called thru-hikers, these veterans will attest that all you need to do to enter another world is leave the indoors (which abound in light switches, mattresses, and the occasional swivel chair) and step into the outdoors (which abound in several billion trees and hard sleeping surfaces). Next you will need to step, and step, and—well, you’ll need to keep stepping for a very long time. You are now in foreign territory, on foot and surrounded by trees.
The best known writer to have walked significant swaths of the Appalachian Trail is Bill Bryson. In his book A Walk in the Woods, he describes a trail that cultivates an appreciation for the simple things (“low-level ecstasy,” he calls it). He describes how even a few days on the trail can make stepping through a doorway a disorienting experience and how it enables the taste of white bread to convey you “to the very brink of orgasm.” Some of his most insightful observations concern how one’s worldview shifts when you depend only on your legs for movement. He writes:
Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.
Three to four million people visit the Appalachian Trail each year; only 500 to 600 hike the whole thing. For more information about America’s greatest footpath, including a list of noteworthy thru-hikers (there are some tough 81-year-old men and 8-year-old girls out there), visit the Appalachian Trail Conservancy website. Also, for an account of one thru-hiker’s journey, check out Bryan Kent Gomes’ site; he includes some nice quotes at the head of each week’s entry.
jgriffinstewart, via Flickr
In many first world countries, tonight will be celebrated with parties, drinking, and the inevitable shouting in unison of “..5!..4!..3!..2!..1!..HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Some will find themselves in public plazas with hundreds or thousands of revelers like those in Times Square, some will be at all-night clubs, and some may celebrate with smaller groups of friends, perhaps sitting around a TV and watching Dick Clark for the 38th time.
However, as Simon Winchester pointed out in an essay that appeared in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, this temporal bacchanalia is a relatively new custom.
New Year madness is a thing of quite modern making, and hardly an improvement on the tradition that long preceded it, which called for a somewhat sober, respectful and reflective morning celebration. I blame the Scots for the worldwide embrace of midnight debauchery. And, of course, whoever it was that, some little while beforehand, went and invented public clocks.
Clocks are the real key. The whole notion of bidding formal and raucous farewell to the Old and offering optimistic greeting to the New was something that could really only occur once we in the public square knew when the exact moment of midnight was. Until the manufacture of proper clock escapements, and until Galileo exhibited the marvels of the pendulum, the slow appearance of dawn just had to do. First light was the only clue anyone had as to the start of a new year.
Besides clocks, he attributes the phenomenon to the Robert Burns’ poem Auld Lang Syne set to a Scottish folk tune, then and now the definitive drunken New Year’s ballad, and an Alfred Tennyson poem “Ring Out, Wild Bells.”
However, before Scots and clocks, people welcomed the new year with the dawn, often in quiet contemplation, preferring to trade a bleary-eyed hangover for a good meal with friends and family, which sounds much more sensible and easier on the liver.
In the article, Winchester mentions the tiny Tongan island of Tafahi, which is the nearest inhabited land to the western side of the International Date Line, and thus the first place where one could celebrate the new decade. If I had my choice, I’d opt for a a spot about 400 miles northwest on the coast of Taveuni in Fiji, where my wife and I spent our honeymoon, watching the sun rise over the coral reef and then enjoying toasted coconut bread and a mango smoothie.
Travel can be like walking on a frozen lake. Although logic tells you it’s safe, it’s hard to ignore the stomach-churn of vulnerability. Your first few steps might be cautious, but soon you’re jumping, stomping, and sliding.
Here are some other similarities between travel and ice fishing, courtesy of a family trip to New Hampshire’s Grassy Pond on Christmas Eve:
While ice fishing and traveling, you’re suspended between two worlds. By poking holes in the barrier, you can find sustenance. It’s a rare pursuit — many have never had the chance or are afraid to try. Others take it further and are only satisfied by complete submersion.
What about you? How thick (or thin) is the ice you travel on?
Photo “Ice Fishing” by Marion Warling via sankax‘s Flickr.
I’m done with the typical New Year’s resolutions. Every year I say I’m going to eat better, exercise more, do laundry on a regular basis. And every year, by March I’m back to my old eating habits, lounging on the couch, with a pile of laundry as tall as my 6-year old niece staring at me from the corner of the room. So this year, I’m concentrating on travel resolutions – and none of those “pack lighter, get to the airport earlier” resolutions either.
My travel resolution is to try one new thing on every trip. Whether it be a new food, a new activity, learning a new skill, or just doing something I wouldn’t normally do, I want to push myself to get out my travel routines. On nearly every trip I take, I take a cooking class. Maybe next time I’ll learn a local craft instead. I also go horseback riding on my travels whenever I can. While I can still do that, perhaps I’ll also take a surfing lesson or try my hand at rock climbing.
Unlike my diet resolutions, I’m off to a good start on this one already. In a few days, I’ll be going on a shark dive in South Africa. Maybe this will be one resolution that I can actually keep.
What are your travel resolutions this year?
Photo credit: Amir K. via Flickr
I had some snippet of poetry floating around in my head the other day and couldn’t figure out what it was from. Then I (naturally, being a child of the Millennium) Googled it and realized that it came from the lush traveler’s anthem, Tennyson’s Ulysses.
For those of you who might have had to write a paper on it in school, you might have missed the glorious words of support for the vagabonder that Ulysses was. The Greek hero of the Trojan war, he spent twenty years trying to get home, plagued by the gods and having adventures every step of the way. The Odyssey ends with his safe return to Ithaca, having slaughtered his wife’s suitors, who proliferated in his absence, and regained his throne. So what happens to the weatherworn vagabond when he’s at home for a year or two? This is one inspirational message, and one to carve around your bowsprit…you know, if you sail.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Some of us have vagabonging etched so tightly into our DNA it could be considered a heritable trait. I certainly plan on introducing any children that I would have to a lifestyle of frequent travel. I plan to sling my would be cublings across my back and walk into the world with them. But could it really be that easy?
While in Morocco, I met a woman in Fes who was vagabonding with her 2 year old son. They had been on the road for 8 months. I was impressed that she’d not only taken her young son on the road so early, but that she had sustained her travels for such a long time. They had little songs and dances for such things as brushing your teeth and putting on your socks and shoes. Their days were slower, more deliberate, and maybe a little more organized. Theirs was a system that really worked, and one that they both seemed to truly enjoy.
I’ve often wondered what will be the best way. Should vagabonding parents wait until their children are a little older to introduce them to the road? At least until they’re out of the Terrible Twos? Or should they hit the road as early as possible?
I’ve seen families backpacking with toddlers in parts of Central America, Africa, and even the US. With the significant community of people who are passionate about travel, vagabonding families are perhaps a swift growing community.
Rolf poses with one his favorite travel-writing role-models, adventure scribe Tim Cahill, at Northern California’s Book Passage Conference in August
Toward the end of each year I usually post a round-up of my travel highlights from the previous 12 months. This year I’ve been diligent enough with additions to the “Rolf’s News and Updates” category that I don’t feel I have many new 2009 details to share. Hence, I’ll just share a few images from some of my favorite (photographable) moments this year:
One of my earliest overseas journeys in 2009 was a February trip to St. Petersburg, Russia. My account of the experience, “St. Petersburg, Vampire-Style,” appears in the December 2009 issue of Afar Magazine. If you read the article, you’ll learn more about the teens pictured above, who taught me the choicest Russian swear words during a wee-hour foray into a bar called Mod.
Perhaps my favorite story assignment of 2009 required me to infiltrate a Star Trek fan-cruise from New York to Bermuda. My five-part account of the experience, “Where No Travel Writer Has Gone Before,” appeared in World Hum (along with a teaser video) in November. Part III of the series revolves around the Star Trek theme-wedding of Wayne and Rita Applegate (pictured above).
As has been tradition in recent years, July found me in France, where I run a month-long creative writing workshop at the Paris American Academy. One of the highlights of the summer for me (pictured above) was reading from my newest book, Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, at the legendary Shakespeare & Company Bookstore on the Left Bank (video of the reading online here and here).
I spent a lot of time in 2009 working and hanging out on my farm in Kansas. I enjoyed many peaceful and sublime moments on the prairie this year, but one of the most fascinating events I witnessed was when Tiffany, my nephews’ Limousin heifer, gave birth to a bull calf, which we named “Wally” (pictured above in my north pasture, just minutes after he was born).
I visit a number of travel-writing events each year, but few can compete with the sheer exuberance and camaraderie of the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference each August in San Francisco’s North Bay. My key contribution to the festivities this year was leading the peanut gallery in an a capella rendition of the Muppets anthem, “Manah Manah.” That’s me in the far right of the above photo; also visible (in roughly left-to-right order) is guidebook publisher Pauline Frommer, Travelers’ Tales publisher Larry Habegger, San Francisco Chronicle travel editor Spud Hilton, World Hum editor Jim Benning, novelist and travel writer Linda Watanabe McFerrin, and travel-writing legend Tim Cahill. [Photo by Joel Carillet, as is the Cahill shot above]
A good portion of my travel in 2009 took the form of various public speaking events in 5 U.S. states and 3 overseas countries, including (but not limited to) the LA Times Travel Show, the Tucson Book Festival, the Kansas Book Awards, the DO Lectures (in Wales), the Chatwin Prize festival (in Italy), and the 100th anniversary celebration of worldwide youth hosteling (pictured above, in Boston). For more detailed descriptions of my 2009 adventures, check out my prior blog updates from November, October, June, or March. [Photo by Keith Levit]
The philanthropic community might consider changing its approach to fundraising by making people feel good, rather than guilty if they don’t help, according to author and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in his December article in Outside magazine: “Nicholas Kristof’s Advice for Saving the World.” Frustrated by the lack of major public reaction to events in Darfur vs. the outpouring of attention to a homeless red-tailed hawk in New York City, Kristof looked to social psychology to learn how to get a better response to humanitarian issues.
Among the things he learned:
Rather than rolling our eyes at our fellow humans (and ourselves), we can learn from how people respond to humanitarian needs and adjust how we tell stories. If we care about calling attention to something, how can we get the best response from our audience? This isn’t merely an exercise for writers, but for anyone who comes back from a trip motivated to help a community.
Kristof points to Kiva.org as an aid organization that has been extremely successful with this type of messaging, by allowing people to help individuals or small groups with microloans. Can you think of others?
Kraft "cheese product" and Cadbury Dairy Milk. Photo: AP file photo.
A few topics that people get heated about: politics, religion, and sport. I’d add food to that list. The New York Times discussed this in an article titled The Chocolate Wars. It’s about Kraft’s attempt to mount a takeover of Cadbury.
The mayor of London had this colorful comment:
“We face an appalling choice of succumbing either to Kraft, makers of the plastic flaps of orange cheese, or to Hershey, whose Hershey bars have been likened in flavor — by independent experts — to a mixture of soap powder and baby vomit.”
There was a similar article in The Economist about a Middle Eastern staple: Rivalry over hummus. That rivalry is almost a microcosm of that region’s conflicts, fears of encroachment, and quest to preserve its heritage.
Why do people feel so strongly about food? The NY times article points out how certain foods are an inextricable part of our childhoods. Due to that, we’re loathe to see them lost to a faceless corporation, particularly a foreign one.
National pride is a big factor too. I’ve yet to meet anyone from Europe who isn’t proud of their cheeses, bread, and beer. Just to name a few things.
There is also a snobby satisfaction in bashing food and claiming you got better stuff from the original country. I know it’ll be hard to eat Chinese food in America after having so many delightful meals in China and Taiwan.
In Taiwan, sometimes the debate is over whether Chinese food in Taiwan or mainland China is better. See this discussion thread on an expat forum. The common argument is that China’s best chefs fled to Taiwan and Hong Kong around 1949. I like to play devil’s advocate and say I like Malaysian Chinese food the best.
In many of my conversations about food, it’s only a matter of time before that common enemy surfaces: America. The articles about chocolate and hummus reflect that trend. Although cities like San Francisco or New York would claim their food is right up there in the top rank.
Any great dishes you’d like to claim for your country or city? Any great memories of meals you’ve had abroad? Please share them in the comments. Names of specific restaurants and their websites would be greatly appreciated.
Gatun Lake, Panama Canal
A year ago this morning, Christmas Eve, I woke up on a sailboat anchored in the Panama Canal. Howler monkeys were making a wonderful ruckus in the trees on shore. The air was weighted with humidity. Our mooring buoy reeked of bird guano. The waters of Gatun Lake lapped softly against our vessel. It was, in short, a rather fabulous way to wake up.
Three days earlier, had you asked me how one gets on a sailboat transiting the Panama Canal, I’d have answered, “I have no idea.” But at the hostel in Panama City I had asked the receptionists if such a thing were possible, and she directed me to a Hungarian fellow in the dorm who had been asking the same question and seemed to have found the answer. A bus ride to Colon and several hours later, I was on a boat preparing to make the two-day transit.
Pre-trip research is vital, but nobody ever masters everything about the place he or she is going to visit before arrival (or after, for that matter). So when you arrive still ignorant about some things, embrace your cluelessness and ask others to teach you.
I remember how, years earlier in India, one of my best experiences stemmed from my ignorance about tipping practices at Pizza Hut. I leaned over to a neighboring table and asked two young professionals if it was appropriate to tip. They answered, and then some minutes later—their names were Sanjeev and Abhay—they invited me to see how India’s young professionals unwind at the end of a long day. Off we went to a club miles from the backpacker district. We got together on more than one occasion, and I relished our continuing conversations about life, history, and culture. “I trust Time magazine more than the New York Times’ investigative reporting,” one of them would say. Or, “Did you know navigation comes from our word navgat—‘to be able to chart your way?’”
Last Christmas Eve, when the sailboat completed it’s transit late in the afternoon, I took a taxi across Panama City to a hostel. I had the address, but since neither the driver nor I could find it I was soon standing alone on an empty street. When a car pulled up in front of an apartment building, I approached the woman getting out to ask for help. She quickly helped me find its location, even walking me there. In the process, however, she and her family also invited me to spend Christmas in their home—an invitation I couldn’t refuse.
As I went to bed that night on a cot in their laundry room, the lights of a Christmas tree shining down the hallway, I considered the times that my ignorance about something led to surprise and relationship. That is, I considered the times ignorance had been a gift.
How about you? Stories welcome!
@Backpack Foodie & Kim:...
