How Long the Lonely Road

‘My dear Bilbo! Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were.’ —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit Hello. It's been a while. It may be strange to hear from a travel blogger years after the last flight, but this is an addendum I feel must be put to print. This is a declaration of war, and this is an apologia. I think I'd better start from the top. I spent the decade from 2009 to 2019 traveling and teaching in Europe and Asia. This experience shaped both my choice to become an educator and my understanding of the privileges and inequities associated with my constellated identity. My membership in a dominant social group—White, male, Christian, cisgender, heterosexual, healthy, able, and middle-class—to a large extent facilitated and structured this wanderjahr , and I have often mistaken for intrepidity and assertiveness the underlying racially-ordered assumption that I will be understood, respected, safe, found attractive, and given access. This assumption is...

Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure were all the time before us. —Herman Melville, Moby Dick Take a look at me, at what adventurer now crosses the threshold again after all the challenges, revelations, transformations, and atonements of a hero’s journey—for I had been heartbroken, hospitalized, and robbed blind; forced to bribe border guards, to ride on the rooftops of jeeps and sleep on the rooftops of buildings.  I’ve played harmonica in the open door of the old trains that cross the Deccan, and I’ve howled at the moon with drunken Burmans in the Shan hills.  I’ve developed charade hand signs for everything from “Where is a hotel?” to “Make it spicy.”  I’ve told girls, “You’re beautiful,” in a dozen languages.  I’ve swam in seven seas.  I’ve survived the twenty-two tho...

Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure were all the time before us. —Moby Dick Don DeLillo wrote of California , “The place had that edge-of-everything quality that creeps into innocuous remarks and becomes the vanguard of estranged feeling.” He was certainly not thinking of Inglewood. I hated the place, despite the fine weather, and was only staying at a hostel in that foulest suburb of L.A. because of its proximity to the airport and to Union Station. So I woke before 7 a.m. and took a shower in the grimy tub, had a muffin and an egg sandwich in the hostel restaurant, which looked like a breakfast restaurant at any cheap hotel anywhere in this country; and took a bus through L.A.’s downtown and Chinatown to the grand halls of Union Station, because I had reserved a ticket for the Amtrak Coast S...

Allons, the road is before us! It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain'd! —Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road" Today I start my sojourn across two dozen countries and 20,000 miles. I fly to London, and from there set out overland toward Israel. I'll fly from the Promised Land to Moscow, then circle the continent and end up somewhere in India. I chose to start in Britain in February since the off-season means the two priciest cities, London and Paris, are a little cheaper to visit. If I stick to the broad strokes of my schedule, I'll end up enjoying the Mediterranean sun in spring and summer, mild weather in Siberian August, cool temperatures in East Asia, and no mosquitoes or monsoons in wintertime Southeast Asia and India. Here's what I'm bringing with me for a year on the road: REI Vagabond 45L backpack Satchel, for a daypack Lowa trailrunning boots Three pairs of socks and three of underwear Long-sleeve, button-down, mo...