To lower her anxiety over the past few months, Nancy King has found solace in solitary hikes along Santa Fe trails and extra time to purrdle, a word she’s coined during the pandemic, with her dying rescue-cat Mia.
All in Life Lessons
Somewhere I Have Never Traveled
For many, knowing where they come from can provide a deep sense of community. For Elyn Aviva, however, this period of global political chaos and pandemic has revealed an ancestral history of seeking refuge from war, oppression, and persecution. Could this explain the innate terror and compulsion to flee she experiences in times of crisis?
GIVE ME A BREAK: TRAVELING WITH A CAST ON
Cliff Simon has a history of accidental injuries. He’s been bandaged and restrained in the Bronx, the East Village, Harlem, Vero Beach, Austin, and Birmingham, with narrow escapes in Santa Fe and Queens. Recently, while recovering from a bone break from yet another fall, he found himself thinking about his accident-proneness. Was he cursed? A klutz? Or was there more to it?
Things Are Definitely Looking Up
In 1996, a then undiagnosed neurological condition had Cliff Simon fearing for his life with no hope in sight. Two months later everything had changed for the better. Now, when the gloom-and-doom media report depressing stories of the virus, of people mired in hatred, or science ignored and leaders mis-leading, he remembers how terrified he was in December of 1996. And, how quickly circumstances can improve.
Traveling Through Time and Space Without Going Anywhere
Elyn Aviva decided that culling her computer contact list would be a productive Corona project. Easy, right? In theory perhaps, but the reality wasn’t quite the cleanup she’d anticipated.
Let Them Eat Cake
Like many people during this pandemic, Cliff Simon has been baking. Baking cakes has been a lifelong pleasure but under the lens of quarantine, baking and sharing have taken on new meaning and revealed new insights.
Leaving Fez, Biting Our Nails
Making plans in Fez for a last-minute Sahara excursion during Ramadan proved to be a bit of a gamble for retired American Michael Papas. As he handed over a stack of cash, he wondered if he was being foolish or if trusting a stranger in a foreign land would pay off.
The Opposite of Loneliness: How travel transforms the experience of solitude and staying home.
Thirty-seven days into self-isolation Ellen Barone asked her husband Hank, “Are you lonely?” Like much of the world’s population, they are physical-distancing and staying home to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19. Would this, she worried, lead to loneliness? And, in turn, to biological effects as deadly as the virus itself? Instead, isolation has brought clarity to something they’d innately suspected all along.
Boundaries
BJ Stolbov, an American expat living in the Philippines, reminisces about changes in human freedom of movement and the futility of nationalistic boundaries during a global health crisis.
A Viral Pilgrimage
Elyn Aviva has spent more than half of her life going on, studying, or writing about pilgrimage—specifically, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Today, as she adjusts to the disorientation of isolation, she poses the question: Could it be that like a pilgrimage, this pandemic offers an opportunity to journey inward and engage in deep self-exploration?
Staying Home During Coronavirus COVID-19 In 25-word Short Stories
Each one of us is adjusting to the new normal of social distancing and self-isolation in different ways. We thought we’d open a door to the private lives of our writers, so you can see what they are feeling and thinking and doing —expressed in 25 words or less.
Migration Time
After eleven happy years as American expats in Spain, Elyn Aviva, and her husband Gary White, made the unexpected decision to return to the United States to make a new home in a new place.
Skiing my way. Living my way.
Boundary setting and truth speaking have been a lifelong journey for Nancy King. So when she honestly communicated what she wanted and needed in a ski buddy to a friend, it was more than a difficult conversation, it was a chance to bring her authentic self to the relationship.
The Best Laid Travel Plans
Michael Papas was forced to adapt his travel plans on the fly after learning that his visitor visa had expired.
Out of My Depth in Turkey
It was 1984 and Cynthia Marshall Shore, at 25 years old, was traveling with friends through Turkey when found herself over her head after getting involved with a Turkish soccer pro turned naval officer.
A Zulu Healing in South Africa
This article is an excerpt from the new book, HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE DEAD…and How Cultures Do It Around the World, by YourLifeisaTrip.com executive editor Judith Fein.
Into the Amphitheatre
A hike into the Amphitheatre at South Africa’s Royal Natal National Park to see the world’s second highest waterfall seemed like a good idea—until it didn’t. With heavy mist obscuring any possibility of a view and a water-slicked, cliff-hugging ladder providing the only way in or out, Richard Kitzinger suddenly found himself face-to-face with his greatest fears.
Where are you from?
For global nomad, Bhavana Gesota, the question “Where are you from?” is not an easy one to answer. Are people asking, she wonders, where she was born? Where she lives now? Or, are they asking which passport she carries? Is there a single answer to this single question? Read on…
Searching for the Familiar
Many of us travel in search of the different, the unusual, the exotic. But, for B.J. Stolbov, wherever he travels, he often finds himself searching for the familiar. Not the things that remind him of “back home,” but, rather, the moments of connection—to others, to nature, to himself—that each journey inspires.
Travels with Rain Man
Kristine Mietzner shares the joys and challenges of travel with a disabled adult, and points toward the truth that everyone benefits from travel.