On Sunday morning, flakes turned from drifters to thick clumps of stars, not sparkly, but a dense white feathering over the whole world. I had been watching for buds, but this was more beautiful than I had imagined a world of green being, our Easter renewal. The past week has felt almost stagnantly normal. In the few moves I've made, I'm surprised how quickly huge changes become routine and how quickly normal itself can change. Even now, I've forgotten what the inside of my home dishwasher…
As I mentioned recently, novel trips are my favorite. New places. So when we decided, fairly spontaneously in February, to again visit Fogo Island in March, it surprised even me how drawn I was to the prospect of a return. We had just been in Fogo nine months before. But the deep appeal of the place was how authentically it was itself, and how its purity was in it not trying to be something else. In early March, we left LaGuardia to an empty plane and airport, the world a bit still and qui…
Since I can remember, one of my life's greatest joys has been planning and finding remote and interesting places to visit, new places my eyes have never seen before. I dream of (someday) Namibia's sand dunes and the cliffs of Oman, and before we ever visited, the plains and peaks of Patagonia. Novelty has been nearly an addiction, perhaps. Seeing new things, researching trips where a new landscape, vista, culture or food is housed: I can't help myself. Each January, I spend full Saturdays planni…
When I wrote last, I think the world felt a bit like the calm right after an orchestra has tuned and has lifted their bows, and now we are in a full-on crescendo. Everything has gotten louder. We feel a collective anxiety and uncertainty like never before, and by moment I wonder if I have too many thoughts or too few, if I am not taking this seriously enough or am taking it too seriously. Several weeks ago, we were in northern Newfoundland on vacation, feeling the last sense of freedom, and simu…