Carne Santificata
I am happy in this village above the sea, this Anacapri, where my husband and I, retired and tending our bucket list, have come to write and escape the dead of another Idaho winter. It is spring here, first flowers blooming, too early in the season for most tourists. The ritual evening passeggiata brings out...
Night With Blue Eyes
For the last thirty-nine years, I have slept with another man. He has pale blue eyes like my husband. I don’t remember an introduction, though there must have been one to dull the danger so I wouldn’t feel those eyes on me. He is a predator. He is The Norwegian. It is 1979, and I...
Anyone He Pleased
The man in the Hawaiian shirt had just been seated in the booth. The dining-car host directed me next to him. He and I on our side with a husband and wife already on the other. We all said hello, and she grabbed a pen from a plastic cup on the table. An artificial sunflower...
Sabbath
Our apartment in German Colony was only a ten-minute walk to the gardens that overlooked the old city. To the left stood the high limestone walls of Jerusalem, to the right Mt. Zion itself with its trees and tiers of white buildings, the blue cone roof of Dormition Abbey, beside it the white bell tower....
Narrative
In October 2013 I flew out of Heathrow while sitting next to a friendly British man. It was in that liminal space between the UK and the US that I traveled, as Sontag described it, to the land of the sick; four hours from landing, I began to drip sweaty rivulets in the air-conditioned plane. I...
Everything Has Changed, but Craft Still Matters: Lessons from a Top Travel Editor
When editor Lavinia Spalding started reading submissions for Volume 12 of The Best Women’s Travel Writing (BWTW), forthcoming in October 2020, she couldn’t know that a pandemic was on its way, one that would claim hundreds of thousands of lives and make travel problematic, if not impossible. She also couldn’t anticipate the cultural upheaval and...
Middle Child
I was meant to be the middle child. A boy came first, or so my mother believed. She met my father at the L.A. radio station where he wrote some jingles, and she typed the scripts. He was moonlighting from teaching. Trying new things. He rode a bicycle up the boardwalk in a dashing white...
Sardina and the Dream
My brother was in a motorcycle accident. I learned about it in a dream. I tried to change it to a car because he’d just learned to drive, and it would have made more sense, but the dream wouldn’t budge. It was so intense that I woke up and went to the kitchen to tell...
Aphorisms for a Lonely Planet
1 When at home I long to travel, on trips I pine for home. Thank you Lord for these twin dissatisfactions, and this vagabond moon blessing my feet. 2 The couple in the Lima Airport entwined under an orange blanket at 2:00 a.m. She plucks rogue hairs from his eyebrows then snuggles closer, all satisfaction,...
Wishbone
We traveled cross-country by car every year. From New York to Utah, from Utah back to upstate New York. Every summer, the drive took days, endless scorching hot summer days. Our mother made sandwiches before we left and put them in an icebox underneath our feet. She placed a large round thermos with lemonade in...
Lick
What is already history: Waking in the dark. Dressing in the dark. Reviewing the checklist of things to remember. Driving on icy roads. Unloading the luggage, kissing goodbye. Showing identification, checking bags. Removing coat, removing shoes, watch, jewelry. Aimless browsing in airport shops, hoping a snack might look appealing at 6 a.m. or a magazine...
Full Service
It is black Friday. I am wearing a black hoodie with the words RACIALLY PROFILED printed in white across my chest. I am selected, randomly, at check in. Hands in my hair, down my back, in my hometown airport. Never touching my skin, only the fabric that is covering it. I am...
“La Vuoi una Mano?”
The old man is wearing a black trench coat and holding it wide open, showing a shriveled, pasty penis. “Cazzo,” I say, staring out the train window. Cappella Agnuzzo is one of the few stops on the single-track Ferrovia Lugano-Ponte Tresa line where a passing loop allows two trains traveling in opposite directions to pull...
Textures and Contrasts: Starting Points for Travel Writing
We walk toward the Saturday flea market in Hannover, Germany; my eyes saccade between the shop windows and my children, who dart ahead toward the river. A woman is kneeling on the ground at an intersection of this pedestrian zone—a square that interrupts the busy street. In front of her are shopping bags and a...
One Hundred Days in India
In India, a dog, a monkey, and a cow attacked me. My husband would say the cow nudged me, but he didn’t feel the horn in his hip. The monkey left marks. As we exited the airport, we watched the slums of Mumbai unroll for miles in all directions. Each home, constructed from cardboard, tarps,...
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