Why I Travel
The places most people only read about turn out to be exactly what they promised — and also something else entirely. Notre-Dame in Paris, the…
São Miguel: Fog, Fire, and Tea
São Miguel arrived after Pico, which meant arriving after something — after the volcanic desolation of Faial's ash fields, after Jeff's quiet reckoning with his…
Faial: From Green to Ash at the Edge of the Atlantic
I had imagined the Azores as something like Hawaii — tropical, volcanic, Portuguese. I was wrong about the first part. We had come from Lisbon,…
Continue reading → Faial: From Green to Ash at the Edge of the Atlantic
The Netherlands: Water, Tolerance, and the City That Shouldn’t Exist
On our first evening on the houseboat, we settled onto the small deck nestled into the side of the Dutch barge with a drink as…
Continue reading → The Netherlands: Water, Tolerance, and the City That Shouldn’t Exist
Asado in the Tigre Delta
Before we left for Argentina, I had said it out loud: I wish I knew someone so we could experience a real asado. The universe,…
Northwestern Europe: Football, Four Countries, Carry-On Only
As the 2018 FIFA World Cup quarterfinals played out, of the teams that progressed — England, France, Belgium, Croatia — we were packing for a…
Continue reading → Northwestern Europe: Football, Four Countries, Carry-On Only
Yosemite Spring
After California's wettest winter on record, Yosemite Valley ran louder than usual — every fall at full volume, granite walls disappearing into mist, a rainbow waiting at the end of it. A spring trip through rain, the Ahwahnee's fireplaces, and a detour to a fig-tree kitchen in Gold Rush country.
The Contrast of Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon West
An hour and a half outside Las Vegas, Hoover Dam's 726 feet of engineered control gives way to Grand Canyon West — nearly a million acres of Hualapai land where an eagle hides in the rock and a different philosophy about land, balance, and belonging comes into view.
Multnomah Falls and the Columbia Gorge
The Columbia River Gorge is the only sea-level passage through the entire Cascade Range — a fact that explains almost everything about why this particular…
Lan Su Chinese Garden: A Portland Acre That Hides Itself on Purpose
Lan Su Chinese Garden hides most of itself on purpose. In under an acre behind a Portland city block, framed views, leak windows, and a strict yin-yang material logic create the sensation of a space many times its actual size — a masterclass in restraint doing more than any expansion could.