Travel

It’s not that I divide my life into the periods before and after I went, exactly. It’s more that the trip accelerated a gradual change that has been happening all my life.

I didn’t realize, when I drove a U-Haul packed with all of my belongings 1500 miles away from home to a new apartment and a new city on the East coast, that I was leaving the sky behind.

I’d returned to Puerto Rico to drink, yes, but more than that, to see how much—and how little—Hurricane Maria had changed things.

Thousands of Gold Rush prospectors climbed the Chilkoot, and many lost their lives. In the grand tradition of Dark Tourism, I decided to join the 2,500 people who now hike it for fun every summer.

On-deck taverns on the Marine Highway System bring together residents of a solitary state, but not for much longer.

The luxury cruise is, often, a vacation to be endured: the rigid structure, embarrassing pampering, forced interaction, the terrible predictability of it all. What could compel a person to keep shipping out, year after year?
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