Travel is never still

When the tide recedes, visitors to Japan’s Miyajima Island gather on the beach under a Torii gate entrance to the Itsukushima Shinto Shrine. When the tide returns, the towering orange gate appears to float in the sea, as does the shrine, built on stilts to accommodate the rhythm of the ocean’s ebb and flow. 

A father and son play basketball, imagining a hoop against the outer wall of their home along the seaside Malecón in Havana, Cuba. The Malecón attracts Havana visitors with their cameras to photograph the golden sun light, the classic cars cruising along the promenade, the  melancholy beauty of the sea-sprayed architecture, and to meet and learn from the families who live here.

A classic car navigates a winding road in rural Wisconsin’s Door County. I drove along this two lane road, wondering what I would find at the tip of the state of Wisconsin’s eastern peninsula. I didn’t know that I would find this curving ribbon of a road that would come to an abrupt end just over the hill, and on the shore of Lake Michigan.  

Hot air balloons tower over the Tanzanian Serengeti. We lifted off before sunup and floated silently over the protected wildlife preserve, above a crush of hippos crowded into a river bend, and traced jackals running along game trails leading to watering holes. When I was a young university student, I spent a year living in Tanzania as a Swahili language student. Tanzania is where I fell in love with travel and stepping outside of my own culture. Decades later that feeling hasn’t faded.

A horse’s mane blows in the breeze as it stops at a mountainside in Montana, overlooking Yellowstone National Park. I rode this smart and sturdy horse during a winter month camping in the high country on the Yellowstone National Park boundary. It was easily among the greatest adventures I’ve taken in my life.

Japanese visitors on an observation deck at the top of a tower in Tokyo, are reflected in the glass as they look out across the city skyline. I went to Tokyo to walk and photograph life in the most populated city in the world. I started with a view from this vantage before descending down into complex, exciting Tokyo.

A woman waves goodbye from the upper deck of a cruise pulling away from the harbor of Havana, Cuba. It was my first chance to travel to Cuba, taking the first passenger ship in 50 years to be allowed to travel directly from the mainland U.S. to Cuba.

An abandoned home leans with the wind on a prairie field near Roy, New Mexico. I drove across the U.S. from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.  in an electric vehicle, to learn about the future of energy and to find out what was possible now.

Japanese shoppers are reflected in mirrors outside a department store in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo feels like the most frenetic, thrilling, most complicated city I’ve ever visited. I wanted others to see it that way, to feel what its like to walk the streets of the world’s biggest and busiest city.

A chair and table inside a small roadside Rt 66 diner in Texas. When traveling, I try not to overlook all that feels familiar to me. And I try to discover the vernacular of places I visit - all that is new to me, but the most intimate to others who call a place home.

Lovers attach locks to a tower overlooking South Korea’s capital city Seoul. I climbed steep hillside steps and rode to the top of a tower to get a glimpse of Seoul below. I was surprised by the thousands of colorful locks attached to the top by lovers wanting to leave their mark. Before the pandemic, I was set to travel to South Korea and where I hope I'll return first.

Travel inspires words, and words inspire travel. And even when travel is paused, we are never truly still, always seeking inspiration. Travel is its own book. Watch Patti Smith’s inspiring ode to movement as we embark upon a new era of travel in a changed world.