There is a thread I keep discovering in my life that I did not consciously plan. Not travel.Not tourism.Not “bucket list” behavior. Something quieter. Participation. Or maybe more precisely: A desire to briefly enter living traditions. Not to master them. Simply to touch them honestly for a little while. That realization arrived sideways, the way […]
Author: Sandy
Japan Objects
I think the objectsknew before I ever didwhere we would all go After I wrote the Ariats post, several people messaged me some version of: “Only you could turn boot shopping into an existential archaeology project.” This is fair. But I have been realizing something lately. Something adjacent to the boots, but perhaps larger. Many […]
Past, In Boots
I have not yet been to Japan even once. Yes, I know this seems improbable, given my Japanese history and language immersion during college, karate years, Japanese Buddhist husband, and current obsession with Iaido. True, though. And so, naturally, I am already planning my “return” trip. This is how my mind works. I have one […]
A Summary: What Africa Gave Me
This is shaping up to be the travel day to end all travel days. The morning began with a few-hour drive from the Cheetah Conservation Fund to the airport in Windhoek. Thankfully only a small portion of the route qualified as what Abraham liked to call a “Namibian massage” — those corrugated dirt roads that […]
Days 26-27: CCF: Purring Cheetahs, Flying Meat, and the Work of Saving a Species
I’m sitting on the veranda at Babson House early in the morning with a cup of coffee, listening to dozens of different bird calls echoing across the Namibian bush. Then I hear another sound. At first it blends in with everything else — a low rhythmic rumble — but something about it feels familiar. I […]
Day 25: Cheetah Conservation Foundation: Wine, Genetics, and Two Very Relaxed Boys
All photos of entire CCF portion can be found HERE Lynn and I are now at the Cheetah Conservation Foundation (CCF), and as I started to type this, we were sitting on the veranda of Babson House, looking out over two cheetah brothers lounging in the afternoon sun while we sip wine from…appropriately…cheetah glasses. Travel […]
Day 23-24: Leaving the Namib: Bush Dinner, Apple Pie, and the Road to Windhoek
We had an easy day and a late morning. Many people stayed back at the lodge to pack, but a few of us went with Abraham over to a small settlement just inside the park gates. Once there, Abraham encouraged us to talk with the guard and ask him about his life. When asked if […]
Day 22: Sossusvlei: Big Daddy, Belly Bumps, and a Marble at Dune 40
The dunes of Sossusvlei are the kind of place that almost doesn’t look real. Photographs help, but when you actually arrive the scale of it all is hard to comprehend. These dunes sit inside Namib-Naukluft National Park, which covers roughly 49,000 square kilometers—one of the largest national parks in Africa and among the largest protected […]
Day 21: The Longest “African Massage” — Swakopmund to Sossusvlei
Today we drove from Swakopmund to Sossusvlei, a journey of roughly six hours across the Namib Desert. Or as Abraham described it: “Today you will experience an African massage.” He was referring to the road. The road — if we are being generous with that term — is mostly corrugated gravel, which means the vehicle […]
Day 20: Skeleton Coast — 210,000 Seals, Sorghum Lunch, and the Long Road Back
Today we drove north along Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, a stretch of shoreline famous for fog, shipwrecks, and one of the most overwhelming wildlife spectacles on earth. The drive itself is long and starkly beautiful — the Atlantic on one side, the desert on the other, and almost nothing in between. Our destination was Cape Cross, […]