It’s hotter in Texas than we’d like. When we unfold ourselves from inside the narrow tube of the three-hour “express” from Norfolk, Virginia to Houston, we step onto the warm runway and breathe in the foreign, humid scent of February in the Lone Star State. Three flights down, one to go. Living overseas, Timmy and I…
Category: Travel
Our Time Machine
Highway 20 is a time machine. An east-west corridor a few roads north of the bustling Interstate 90, along which we now live, Highway 20 is less traveled than the freeway, which goes eventually to Boston, and also than Highway 2, which goes to the faux-German village of Leavenworth and various other agricultural destinations. Highway 20…
Where We’ve Landed
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike. John Muir, “The Yosemite” After a supper of delicious hamburgers with my parents, I leave the chalet half an hour before sunset, turning right to walk up our short road…
Our Villages
“Raise your hand if you ever taught me in a Sunday school class,” Timmy requests on Sunday morning. I’m sitting in the front row of a fiercely air-conditioned sanctuary, shivering while outside the temperature climbs to 90˚ F before 9:00 AM. I’m not in Germany anymore. Where I am is Virginia Beach Community Chapel, Timmy’s home…
Places as People
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid…
Walking Towards Waterfalls
The trail turns steeply upward once we’ve left the road. We’ve been walking along a creek in Lenk, Switzerland for a while, carefully skirting the edges of the path to avoid marring the smooth grooves of the langlauf, or cross-county skiing tracks. Now, the signs take us off the wide, flat track, into deep snow…
Prepared {A Place For Us}
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will…
Beyond the Hallways
We’re driving away from our last exploration. Switzerland is damp and cool this April day, unseasonably grey for the spring Senior Day trip to Lucerne. Upon our arrival to this touristic hamlet on the shores of Lake Lucerne, I’d sent them off with a small walking map and instructions that included “walk across the cool wooden…
Oh, The Places We’ve Been
The times we had oh, when the wind would blow with rain and snow were not all bad we put our feet just where they had, had to go never to go “Postcards From Italy,” Beirut The view from our castle tower is stunning, the lights of Saturday-night Nürnberg spread out below us in sequined splendor. We’re…
The Way Home 