“Seventeen days is too little time to make a person expert about a place, but it’s more than enough to have made me fall in love with this northwestern corner of continental Africa. That lyrical name — Morocco! — piqued my curiosity for decades… Our initial plans took several of us north from Casablanca for three days to the “blue city” of Chefchaouen”
“Tucked in the northeastern corner of Italy on terrain hotly contested in World War I and again in World War II, the Dolomite Mountains march gloriously southeast toward the Adriatic Sea. These mountains don’t jut so much as carve a serrated skyline with jagged knife-edged drama…”
“As I reach into the pantry to prepare a winter’s morning dose of caffeine, daylight struggles to penetrate the fog outside. I appreciate the confluence of this state both inside and outside of my still-sleepy brain… Morning routine elevates my level of wakefulness.”
“No” is such a powerful word. It is human nature to resist it, because “No” means not getting something you (think you) want. Like the chips. The bread. The extra glass of wine. It’s easy to slide something you know isn’t on the diet plan into your pie-hole. So...Darned...Easy...”
“Somehow, I always knew that a visit to Asheville, North Carolina, meant a visit to Biltmore. Certain attractions are synonymous with their locations. It was a given, then, to carve out a day to go there while planning an autumn 2025 trip to the area…. Despite the grandeur and lavishness of Biltmore, a palpable vibe of humility reigned for me.”
“It’s time yet again for the seasonal ice-breaker, “So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I’m genuinely happy for those from loving, happy families who greet the year-end holidays with honest joy. It’s not a myth! It does happen. But for many, that casual question can generate a minefield of conflicting, competing, and cringe-worthy emotions.”
“On September 26, 2024, the people of western North Carolina were ransacked by Hurricane Helene. The Category 4 storm left utter devastation in her wake… So, in June 2025, two buddies and I decided to take an autumn trip to the hill towns of Hot Springs, Marshall, and Asheville, NC.”
“We pulled up to the dock at Sao Miguel, one of the nine main islands in the volcanic archipelago in May, 2025. Its largest city, Ponta Delgada (pop’n 69,000), is the capital of the Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal. Our one full day there was busy! We went whale-watching on small boats with spotters on the island guiding the skippers…”
“Imagine a group of people tasked to accomplish important things, but who do not share much in common. They tend to take one of two sides when controversy comes up. Common ground is not common… Terms like “leadership” and “judgment” and “consensus” bubble up… It realizes that it is time to find a better way.
“On June 8, 1965… Paul Petzoldt, a renowned mountaineer in his late fifties by then, brought his dream to reality: to start a wilderness leadership school where people could learn the skills to thrive in remote locations, to lead and teach others safely, and come back to town without causing harm to the environment. He called it the National Outdoor Leadership School...”
“To me, glaciers seem like immense organic beings, not just lumps of ice. This notion, hatched in Alaska, was confirmed on a visit to the world’s largest non-polar icefield in Patagonia at the tip of South America. Glaciers have moods, and good days and bad…”
“The heft of the fruit in my hand heralds the arrival of a highly-anticipated annual event: the intensely sweet juiciness that comes from a Palisade peach. With my serrated knife, I cut into the firm skin and quarter the peach all the way around from the top, then around its equator.”
“People who know me know I love the various tastes of liquor, liqueur, wine, beer, doesn’t matter. Therefore, imagine my joy to discover that Madeira was on the itinerary during a 2025 springtime journey across the island groups of Macaronesia. But there is much more to Madeira than its famous wine.”
“Raise your hand if you think the Canary Islands were named after the bird. Yes? In fact, the famous yellow bird was named after the islands. Actually, it is said that the name stems back to… an expedition around 40 BCE led by Juba II, king of Mauritania. Juba II called the island group “Canaria” in recognition of the multitude of canes [Latin for “dogs”] of great size he discovered there. Now you know!”
“Patagonia is not a country, but a region at the tip of South America that includes terrain in both Chile and Argentina. It spans the continent from the southern Atlantic Ocean across the Straits of Magellan… Years of wishing to see Patagonia firsthand evolved into reality for two weeks in 2010, when I journeyed there with my hiking/adventure buddy, Margaret Idema.”
“Suddenly, it has been twenty years since our first adventure. My Travel Buddy and I have done some pretty cool stuff…”
“Cabo Verde lies in the Atlantic Ocean 320 nautical miles (370 miles) offshore from Senegal, the westernmost nation of mainland Africa. Despite its diminutive size and remote location, Cabo Verde has played some outsized roles in human history. For one, Cabo Verde was for centuries the first stop for slave ships leaving Africa bound for Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United States. That didn’t end until 1876.”
“I loved being on the water and seeing...nothing. No land. No whales migrating. Almost no pelagic birds. No other ships. Not even aircraft contrails in the sky! Remote places always make me happy. There’s power in the opportunity to remember the Earth as it was before all the buzz and whistle and chaos and confusion of modern life.”
“She’s more than 30 feet long, and has surely come to this beautiful lagoon midway down the west coast of the Baja California peninsula for dozens of winters. I am amazed how she seems simply to emerge, ghostlike at first, then as mottled slate-dark rising from below.”
“Either way you go, from home to town or back, it’s a twisty uphill haul for half, and a twisty way back down. Eventually, near my road, the terrain levels off, but, wow, it is a fun ride… Coming from town, it all begins with a “Michigan left turn.”
