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Friends of a Long Year is a weekly, private mailing list bringing stories to your inbox like the olden days. It's written in the spirit of Mary Austin. It was once called Place Without a Postcard, which neatly summarizes what I like to write about.

Archive

So Far, I Have Not Found The Science

Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia, U.S. A canoe trip through the Okefenokee Swamp down in the southern most corner of Georgia. Paddling the strange reddish and incredibly still waters. Begging alligators, aching muscles and the kindly folks of Stintson's Barbecue all getting their due.

How to Get Off Your Butt and Travel the World

Athens, Georgia, U.S. How do you make the leap from cubicle daydreams to life on to the road? You want to travel the world, but, like me, you have a million excuses stopping you. How do overcome the inertia that keeps you trapped in a life that isn't what you want it to be? Here's a few practical tips and how tos designed to motivate you to get off your butt and travel the world.

No Strangers on a Train

Athens, Georgia, U.S. We mythologize trains because they harken back to an age of community travel, a real, tangible community of travelers, not just backpackers, but people from all walks of life, people traveling near and far together in a shared space that isn't locked down like an airplane and isn't isolated like a car; it's a shared travel experience and there are precious few of those left in our world.

Leonardo Da Vinci and the Codex on Bunnies

Birmingham, Alabama, U.S. A few pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks make a rare trip outside Italy, to Birmingham, AL, of all places. But the Birmingham Museum of Art is home to far more alarming works of art, works which depict the eventual, inevitable, bunny takeover, after which all the elements of our reality will be replaced by bunnies. Seriously. You heard it here first.

Elkmont and the Great Smoky Mountains

Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee, U.S. Pigeon Forge is Myrtle Beach in the mountains. Redneck weddings cascade straight out of the chapel and into the mini golf reception area. Pigeon Forge is everything that's wrong with America. But we aren't here for Pigeon Forge, it just happens to have a free condo we're staying in. We're here for the mountains. Smoky Mountain National Park is just a few miles up the road.

Rope Swings and River Floats

Mountain Cabin, Georgia, U.S. Two weekends ago we went up to the mountains, just outside of Dahlonega GA, and floated the Chestatee River using inner tubes, various pool toys and one super-cool inflatable seahorse. Unfortunately, proving one of my travel mottos -- you can never go back -- a return trip proved disastrous.

Our Days Are Becoming Nights

León, Nicaragua A short thought on the eve of our departure from Nicaragua: Everywhere I go I think, I should live here... I should be able to not just visit places, but in habit them. Of course that isn't possible, which is too bad.

Tiny Cities Made of Ash

León, Nicaragua The church bells of León have become a constant cacophony, not the rhythmic ringing out of the hours or tolling from Mass that the human mind seems to find pleasant, but the atonal banging that only appeals to the young and dumb. But Francisco is entirely unperturbed; He's too fascinated with the tattoo on Corrinne's shoulder to bother with what slowly just becomes yet another sound echoing through León.

You Can’t Go Home Again

Little Corn Island, Nicaragua The first time we came to Little Corn Island it was April, the tail end of the dry season. It rained once or twice, but never for more than five minutes and always followed by more sunshine. This time it's the end of June, just well into the wet season, and the island is an entirely different place.

Returning Again — Back on Little Corn Island

Little Corn Island, Nicaragua Generally speaking, the world seems so huge and so full of amazing destinations that repeating one never struck me as a judicious use of my short allotment of time. But for Little Corn Island I'm willing to make an exception and of course, the universe being what it is, our second trip to Little Corn Island has been unpredictable and entirely new.

In Love With a View: Vagabonds, Responsibilty and Living Well

Athens, Georgia, U.S. Why all the vitriol about a seemingly innocuous concept -- that traveling doesn't have to cost a lot of money, isn't all that difficult and hey, you can even go right now? People like us, who feel tied down by responsibility, find the suggestion that we actually aren't tied down patronizing and yes, elitist.

Little Island in the Sun

Little Corn Island, Nicaragua We arrived on Little Corn Island around sundown and met Ali, whom I at first took to be a tout, but he showed us the way to our guesthouse and, after settling in and getting a feel for the island, I realized that Ali, wasn't a tout, he was just a really nice guy who enjoyed doing favors for tourists, just beware the Yoni beverage he offers.

Return to the Sea

San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua Southwestern Nicaragua is a very small strip of land with Lago Nicaragua to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The main town in the area, Juan Del Sur, surrounds a well protected harbor with a mediocre strip of sand. For the nice beaches you have to head up or down the coast to one of the many small inlets.

Ring The Bells

Granada, Nicaragua The Church, which dates from the 1600s has the the narrowest, steepest, circular concrete staircase that I've ever encountered. It had a low railing and circled up four stories worth of precipitous dropoffs before you hit solid ground. From the top was a views of Granada's endless sea of mottled pink, orange and brown hues -- terra cotta roof tiles stretching from the shores of Lago Nicaragua all the way back toward the hills.

Fall

Athens, Georgia, U.S. The trees are in full technicolor swing. The land is slowly dying, and not just because it's Fall, we're also in the middle of a prolonged drought and this year the leaves are opting for a James Dean-style, leave-a-good-looking-corpse exit. If you're a leaf and you've got to go, do it with class.

On The Other Ocean

Catalina Island, California, U.S. Consider what would happen if your house were tilted 30 degrees to the left, how this would complicate ordinary activities -- like say walking. Now throw in a bouncing motion that lifts the floor five or six feet up and down in a seesaw-like motion on a perpendicular axis to the 30 degree tilt -- things become more like riding a seesaw that's attached to a merry-go-round which is missing a few bolts. That's sailing.

Being There

Myrtle Beach Airport, South Carolina, U.S. Myrtle Beach does not exist. Nearly everything in Myrtle Beach is a paltry derivative of some original form. For instance, most of the country has golf courses, in Myrtle Beach there are endless rows of putt-putt courses, where most towns attempt to draw in big name musical acts for their tourist venues, Myrtle Beach is content with impersonators.

Sailing Through

Charleston, South Carolina, U.S. The rumors are true. I moved back to the south; Athens GA to be exact. But I hate staying in one place for too long, so after a month or two in Athens I headed up to Charleston to visit a friend. The south is curious place. If you've never been here I couldn't hope to explain it, but it's not so much a place as an approach. A way of getting somewhere more than anywhere specific. Perhaps even a wrong turn.

Goodbye to the Mother and the Cove

Los Angeles, California, U.S. It's strange how you can plan something, go through all the motions of making it happen without ever really understanding what you're doing. I've been doing this for the better part of three years now. I realized recently that I have no real idea how I came to be here.

Everything All The Time

Los Angeles, California, U.S. I don't know if I'm just overly paranoid but when I call up memories in the dark hours of the Beaujolais-soaked pre-dawn, I see a collection of mildly amusing, occasionally painful series of embarrassments, misunderstandings and general wrong-place, wrong-time sort of moments. Which isn't to imply that my life is a British sitcom, just that I'm not in a hurry to re-live any of it.

The Sun Came Up With No Conclusions

Los Angeles, California, U.S. "And so it is that we, as men, do not exist until we do; and then it is that we play with our world of existent things, and order and disorder them, and so it shall be that non-existence shall take us back from existence and that nameless spirituality shall return to Void, like a tired child home from a very wild circus." -- Robert Anton Wilson and Kerry Thornley. Good luck and Godspeed Mr. Wilson.

Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose

Los Angeles, California, U.S. Traveling soul. Soul is not something out there or in you, it's the place where you meet the out there; something very similar to what I think James Brown meant — a mixture of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sublime.

Homeward

Los Angeles, California, U.S. New York, New York. John F Kennedy airport 1 am date unknown, sleepy looking customs guard stamps a passport without hardly looking at, without even checking to see where I had been. A light drizzle is falling outside and the subways extension to the terminal never looked so good. What is it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there.