place-based writing Archives

One Week in Israel

October 14, 2015 by Kristin Winet 6 Comments

I’m sitting next to an Israeli-American college student named Edan who has just told me two very different things. “There’s just this vibe in Israel,” he said first, an electric wistfulness in his deep brown eyes. Then, he hesitates and smiles in the way that someone smiles when they’re about to say something they can’t believe they’re about to say. “But, you really picked a hell of a time to come here.”

I know what he means—I’m not immune to the media headlines, the sensationalized rhetoric, the news stories from CNN and the BBC capitalizing on the mounting events that some news personalities have started calling the stirrings of The Third Intifada. I’ve been hearing it because I can’t not hear it—it’s literally everywhere, every time I open my internet browser. Palestinian-Israeli Tensions Mount in Jerusalem. Jerusalem Abandoned After Two Israelis Shot in City Center. Rocks Thrown at Innocent Bystanders in the Streets.

My friend Yolanda, who lives outside of Tel Aviv, has sent me the news articles from The Jerusalem Post—articles whose headlines are no less sensational—and has told me that, although she’s never said this to anyone before, we should avoid the Old City completely, because the situation there is just too unstable. I ask my seatmate about “the state of things,” what he thinks about these undeniable and interminable tensions that have become a daily part of life in this tortured little country, this complex, sacred space, in the heart of the Mediterranean. He shrugs and tells me this: “It’s just a part of who we are. It’s like, at some time or another, everybody is either oppressing or the oppressed.” His comment, though meant to be exasperated, tells me more about the way 20-somethings feel about Israel than anything else I’ve read.

Edan and I spend the next hour talking about what Israel is really like. As an American whose grandparents still live in Haifa, he is intimately connected to both cultures, and he decided to attend university in Israel so he could finally have the chance to see what life was really like for him, an American Jew with tangible roots to his homeland. As a budding entrepreneur, he is going to business school in Israel because he wanted to meet other young Israelis and he wanted to get a multinational education. Eventually, he wants to start a line of fashion jeans for hipsters with stores in both L.A. and Tel Aviv, the two most magnetic, sensual, misunderstood cities in the world.

So, here we are. I’m on an airplane to Rome, sailing once again over the Atlantic Ocean, to a place I’ve only imagined in my dreams. To a place that, until recently, I only knew as a country where my dear friends Alison and Joel took their birthright trips, as a legendary place that was mentioned in my Sunday school stories, as a nativity scene on my parents’ bookshelf during the winter holidays. I also knew, somewhere in this mix, that it was also a place as inextricably tied to occupation and political tension as the word Bethlehem is to the Christmas play we used to enact at school each year with white kids wearing brown leather sandals with straps and tunics too big for their child-sized bodies.

I’m on an airplane to Rome, and then to Tel Aviv, to a place that, yes, reminds me that this chosen passion of mine, to journey, to experience, to write, to capture scenes as best I can with a lens, often comes with a price. It requires me to face trauma, to face insecurity and cultural uncertainties, to open myself up to the possibility that yes, life is not perfect, not elsewhere, and not at home; it is not without political strife; it is not without raced, gendered, and socio-economic realities. I think that this is one of the first lessons that Israel can teach me—that living with uncertainty is as undeniable a part of life as getting out of bed in the morning. It’s a way of life, it’s a reality of life, it’s a daily part of life.

But I also know that I am a better person for having had the chance to learn these things. And I’m not afraid—I’m electrified. I can’t wait. I want to understand more fully the lives the Israelis and the Palestinians live and experience every day. I hope, that even though I will be a temporary visitor in their home, that they will allow me to ask, and that they will tell me. What we see in the media is never, ever the full story, and I am so utterly grateful for this opportunity to learn what that actually means. I’ve been to places recovering from war before, places like Medellín, Ciudad Juarez, and Malta, but I’ve never been to a place that fears a new war is on the horizon.

Map of Where We’re Going

So, let’s see what our week in Israel looks like. Of course, our itinerary might—and almost certainly will—change depending on the current political situation, road traffic, and/or time and crowd constraints, but here’s what the Israeli Ministry of Tourism has planned for us.

Imagine a circle, starting at Ben Gurion International Airport (the blue airplane icon). Travel up and around in a clockwise circle from there and keep going until you get back to Ben Gurion. Because I could only figure out how to put pins on a Google map and not numbers, envisioning them as pins in a clockwise circle is about the best we’re going to get. That being said, I’ve read that flexibility and adaptability are as much a way of life as anything else around here, so in the spirit of our upcoming journey, let’s just use this as a starting point.

If anything, it’s nice to see an up-close map of Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

israel map

Day 1 – Weds. – Haifa, Old Acre, Beit She’an

After the million hours it’s going to take us to actually get to Israel, we have to get in a bus and ride from the airport up to Haifa, where we’re spending our first night (and at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, a place I am hoping has beautiful pillows and comfortable mattresses….). When we wake up on Wednesday morning, we’re going to start our day touring Haifa, Israel’s third-largest port city (and the name of the dog who lives next door to the Winet cabin in Idaho). We’ll visit the Bahai Shrine and Gardens, which, though I know little about it, seems to be the world’s center for the Bahai faith.

From there, we’re going to drive across the Galilee to Old Acre, an Ottoman seaport designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where we’ll get to see the fishermen at work, shop at a street bazaar, and visit an Israeli bathhouse. After our afternoon in Old Acre, it looks like we’ll head back and check in at the En Gev Holiday Resort kibbutz, where we’ll have what is rumored to be St. Peter’s fish….or descendants of the fish St. Peter used to harvest on the Sea of Galillee two thousand years ago.

Day 2 – Thurs. – Kibbutz En Gev, Caesarea, Jerusalem

We’ll be waking up early Thursday morning for a tour of the kibbutz (commune) before we drive over to Caesarea, a coastal Mediterranean resort town and former Roman capital. We’ll spend some time wandering around the ruins and the ancient theater before heading to the Israel Museum where I will get to see, with these own two blue eyes of mine, the actual Dead Sea Scrolls. For those of you who don’t know what the Dead Sea Scrolls actually are, let me say this: they are the oldest remaining biblical texts in existence. No matter what your beliefs are (or if you even have any), there is something immaculately sacred about these books.

Caesarea1

Thursday night, we’ll check in to the Dan Panorama Hotel in Jerusalem and get to meet Chef Moshe Bason, a local farm-to-table phenom in Jerusalem whose entire repertoire of recipes is based off of references to foods and cooking techniques mentioned in the Bible. This, too, sounds extraordinary….I’m hoping to steal him away for an interview!

Day 3 – Fri. – City of David, Western Wall, Mt. Zion (Jerusalem)

If everything goes as planned, Friday will be the kind of day that I know I will remember for the rest of my life. It will be that kind of day, the one and only chance I might ever have to walk through, on my own two feet, the world I only know from my Methodist Sunday school classes as a child, the world I know only through books, and stories, and the sermons of my childhood ministers. I will get to see the City of David. I will get to touch the Western Wall, Judaism’s most sacred place on Earth and I will get to walk through the Western Wall Tunnels. I will get to stroll down the cobblestoned alleys of the Cardo, the Roman-Byzantine streets that were once trod by people thousands of years older than me.

I will visit Mt. Zion, and I will see the room of Jesus’ Last Supper. I will dine in the old city center, and I will see the streets light up with life. Or so I’ve heard.

I hope, hope, hope with all of my heart that the Old City is reopened to the public and is safe by Friday. A precarious time, but in Israel, always a precarious time.

Day 4 – Sat. – Dead Sea, Judean Desert

And today, I will float on water. And we will visit the absolute lowest point on the planet. I think we’re also supposed to take a Jeep safari to Mout Sedom, a place comprised entirely of salt.

We will bathe in the sea and, according to my itinerary, put on the black mud. I have no idea what this black mud of which they speak actually is, but I guess we’ll find out together.

Tonight, we’ll spend our last night at the Leonardo Plaza Hotel in Jerusalem.

Day 5 – Sun. – Tel Aviv

In the morning, we’ll hit the road again and head to the National Musem of the Holocaust in Yad Vashem. From there, we’ll drive to the city of Tel Aviv, Israel’s cultural, financial, commercial, and entertainment center. We’ll walk through Neve Tzekek, Tel Aviv’s oldest neighborhood from the 1800s, and we’ll get to stop in some art galleries, cafes, and boutiques.

From the city center, we head to Old Jaffa, an ancient seaport on the coast that has (so I’ve heard) been transformed into a vibrant vacation spot for Israelis and international visitors. We’ll visit some museums, walk around, have dinner at Wilhemina, a restaurant in a former German colony, and hit the Tel Aviv nightlife, a nightlife I’ve heard is like nowhere else on earth.

Day 6 – Mon. – Tel Aviv

And then, just like that, our last day. Our plan, as of now, is to visit the Carmel open-air market, to travel to the White City, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its unique whitewashed, modern architecture, and to take a swim in the Mediterranean and reflect on our voyage.

We will have a special bon voyage dinner with the Ministry of Tourism at a local restaurant called, interestingly, Dr. Shakshuka. We will sleep a few hours, check out of our hotel at 1:30 in the morning, and leave for the airport.

I will be home, in the insanity of flights, time changes, and the weirdness of the Circadian rhythm, by 11:45 a.m.

So, without further ado, shalom Israel!

Yours in travel,

Kristin

—

All photographs from Flickr’s Creative Commons. I thank them for their generosity and I hope my photos turn out just as beautifully!

I’m excited to be traveling to Israel and exploring this magnificent holy land with the Israel Ministry of Tourism.

Waterways, Tsars, and Vodka: To Russia!

May 26, 2015 by Kristin Winet 2 Comments

First things first: I am a consummate waterbug. Put me anywhere near water and you won’t see me for a few hours because I’ll be in, next to, or on top of the water. My whole adult life, ever since I left the lush and fragrant South, I keep returning to places with water in my travels…the beaches in Spain, the tiny island of Malta, the Caribbean coast of Colombia, Asian and European cities along the water: all of these places, filled with the fresh wetness of water, are invigorating, tropical, forested, and temperate places, and I adore them all. Though I’ve lived in the Sonoran Desert for the past seven years, a place too many assume (mistakenly, I’ll add) to be a dry and desolate arid land without plants, I dream of water, hike miles to get to water in the Catalina mountains, take extra long showers and eagerly await our monstrous and wonderful monsoon season, just so I can smell the sweetness of the mesquite and the brightness of the desert flowers after they’ve been doused in summer rains.

But I have never been on a cruise.

Second, I have also yearned to bring my mom with me on my travels for a very long time. All those years ago, when I started writing, I wrote for me, yes, but I also wrote for my mom and dad, to bring them along with me on my crazy rides, to remind them that I loved them, to have ears for my incessant stories, to keep connected to my home in some small way. Though I’ve never completely understood how they have time for this, my parents have read–and I do not exaggerate this–everything I’ve ever written. Not all the drafts and journals, but every school paper, every blog post, every published article, even, yes, my unwieldy and super heavy 300+ page dissertation. They are the only audience I’ve ever had who has literally seen me through everything, and for this, I am forever and eternally grateful. But there’s something that’s always nagged at me: How could I, the daughter who was set free into the world by her mom’s cajoling 10 years ago (thank you, mom!), fill up the pages of her passport while her mom did not even have one?

So when I learned that I had the chance to sail with Viking River Cruises this summer, and that I could bring one guest, these two worlds collided in a beautiful serendipity: I could have my water, and I could have my mom. When I called to invite her, the first thing I said to her was,

“Mom, you need to go get a passport.”

And she said, “Why? Where are we going?”

And when I told her Russia, I could almost feel her eyes bulge. “With me? Are you sure?”

Followed by my dad’s voice coming from the kitchen, “St. Petersburg! Doesn’t it stay light there all the time in the summer?” Leave it to dad to know something off the cuff about the weather in St. Petersburg.

And, three months later, here we are, two days away from our respective flights across the Atlantic that will take us to a country that spans nine time zones. A country I know little about save for what I’ve learned in history classes, popular culture, and popular movie and television renditions. It’s time to see what else is out there, to hear from the voices on the ground, to see those beautiful spires of Imperial Russia and to learn what it must have been like to live under Communist regime. To see what modern-day Russia looks, feels, sounds, and smells like.

In anticipation, I asked my friend Olga (who I met two years ago in Malaysia and who lives in Moscow) to help me prepare by teaching me a few important Russian phrases. Here’s what I’ve got in my little book so far:

Spasibo-thank you
Pozhaluista-you are welcome
Privet-hi
Kak dela?-How are you?

Hopefully, by the end of our two weeks together, I’ll have a few more words in my repertoire of Russian vocabulary.

Mom, are you ready for this? 🙂

The Lowdown: Where We’re Headed

The cruise is sandwiched between the two renowned cities of Russia: St. Petersburg to the north and Moscow to the south. Though I can’t wait to see these great cities, I’m fascinated by what lies between. Cities with names like Mandrogy, Yaroslavl, and Uglich….places that remain completely unfamiliar to me. In a lot of my research (and as you’ll see in the photos below that I snagged from Flickr’s creative commons), all I could find were monuments and buildings. And while monuments and buildings are surely important parts of a country’s living history, I would really like to know what life is like around and behind those structures.

What are the Russians talking about? What’s on their minds? What is a day in the life like? For instance, if someone came to Arizona and all they did was take back photos of the Grand Canyon and the red rocks of Sedona, no one would have any idea what people like me do everyday in our work and play time.

That said, I’m incredibly excited to have this unique opportunity to get up close and personal with these waterways and what these Golden Ring towns hold with their ancient monasteries and tiny river villages. My mom and I will be cruising together for thirteen long days, sailing for many of them and stopping over for a few nights in the major cities.

cruisemap — Viking River Cruise’s map of their Waterways of the Tsars cruise leaving from St. Petersburg

Here’s a little list of what we’re planning to do while we’re in each city. Of course, with the way I travel, this list will surely change with my whims 🙂

St. Petersburg, Russia (4 Days)

In our first few days in St. Petersburg, otherwise known as “The City of 300 Bridges,” we plan to see the 18th century rococco-inspired Catherine Palace (picture below); do an up-close walking tour, see a Russian ballet performance, check out the Peterhof Palace (I’ve heard it has amazing landscaped gardens!), visit a kommunalka commune, and take an evening boat cruise. In-between these outings with Viking, I’m going to have to squeeze in a side trip to the Russian Museum of Erotica, where I’ll be on assignment getting up close and personal with Rasputin. More on that to come 🙂

Mandrogy, Russia (1 Day)

We’re making a quick stop in this little village on the Svir River, and while here, I plan to don my bathing suit and try out a Russian bath house (also called a banya). If we have time, we might do a matroyshka doll painting class in the local craft village.

16155519850_37762cca1e_k — Flickr/Larry Koester

Kizhi, Russia (1 Day)

All I really want to see on Kizhi island is this magnificent church below–it’s both an UNESCO World Heritage Site and an architectural feat. It was built without a single nail!

Kuzino, Russia (1 Day)

Kuzino is rumored to have some beautiful monasteries and art work from the 12th century. Very excited to see some of these wooden chapels. We’re also planning on visiting with children at a local school, but I’m not sure exactly what that will entail. I’ll keep you posted!

16370647271_4799dd60c9_k — Flickr/Paul Koester

Yaroslavl, Russia (1 Day)

One of the Golden Ring cities, we’ll be going to a farmer’s market, handicraft village, and visiting the church below, which apparently has incredible frescoes and Russian icons.

Uglich, Russia (1 Day)

Uglich will entail walking tours, a couple more churches (like this super cute one with the blue and gold-starred domes!), and an afternoon tea.

Moscow, Russia (4 Days)

Finally, Moscow. In our days here, we plan to do an up-close walking tour, attend a folklore concert, walk around the old city, take a Jewish Moscow tour to learn about some of the important sites of the Jewish people who settled here, visit with my friend Olga, and head to the famous Kremlin (see picture below).

Of course, any city trip–especially with my mom!–will entail lots of people-watching, trying new foods, and getting lost on side streets.

If you’re interested, check out the full itinerary here on Viking’s website.

Yours in travel,

Kristin

—

All photographs from Flickr’s Creative Commons. I thank them for their generosity and I hope my photos turn out just as beautifully!

I’m excited to be traveling to Russia with Viking River Cruises on their 2015 Waterways of the Tsars cruise from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

Come Join Us for the Women in Travel Summit!

December 6, 2014 by Kristin Winet 2 Comments

What could possibly be better than spending a weekend in a gorgeous city with 300 smart, influential, incredible women? (I’ll wait while you think about it).

Probably not much. So, then, I’m super excited–and humbled, and nervous, and all the good stuff that comes with the anticipation of an upcoming trip–to announce that I’ve been invited to do a nonfiction writing workshop at the second annual Women in Travel Summit this year!

The Women in Travel Summit (WITS) is the creation of Go Girl Travel Network, an online community of adventurous, independent women around the world who strive to live globally (in whatever ways they understand the term–physically, emotionally, spiritually, etc.). WITS educates, inspires and connects female travel bloggers (or female traveler allies–you certainly don’t have to identify as a female to come) together, while also providing a forum for travelers, bloggers and industry professionals to grow relationships with each other. The Summit features three conference presentation “tracks” that participants can choose from, including:

The Traveler: How to travel on a budget, finding a job abroad, traveling solo, choosing ethical travel solutions.

The Blogger: How to maximize your SEO, basic HTML coding, travel vlogging, using social media.

The Entrepreneur: Building your personal brand, creating a following, working with travel companies.

This year, I’m presenting in the Blogger track. And my topic? Here’s a hint: it’s one of my FAVORITE topics to discuss with my writing students (And one they usually try to avoid at all costs).

Revision! In my session, I’m hoping to reintroduce and help writers rediscover the art of revision, an often overlooked but integral part of the blogging process. I’m envisioning it more as a round-table than a presentation, per se, because what I’m hoping to do is model it after the creative writing workshops I did in my MFA. No one sits at the head of the table, no one takes control of the conversation, and everyone gets a chance to speak. Blending my academic experience with my love for sharing travel stories…I honestly don’t think there could be anything better than this.

Plus, and here’s the more important thing, the voices of women, minorities, and people of color haven’t always been represented very well in the travel industry, and it’s places like these where I believe real change and an embracing of other perspectives and ways of knowing can start to happen. For instance: Think of three famous travel writers (except maybe Elizabeth Gilbert, who always seems to come to mind because of her 2006 travel memoir Eat, Pray, Love). So other than that, are any of them women? People of color? People who aren’t of privilege? Or just people who aren’t concerned with conquering other people and places? Digital media–and blogging in particular–has a unique opportunity here, then, to change the way people see the art and act of travel. Here’s hoping the second annual WITS can spark the fire.

Final-Women-in-Travel-Summit-small-copy1 The summit will be held on March 27-29, 2014 in Boston, Massachusetts at the Revere Hotel Boston Common. Tix (which you can buy here) are $159 for bloggers/writers and $199 for general admission. Oh! And every attendee gets one of these beauties, too.

I’d love to see you there–and maybe even do a little writing while we’re at it!

Yours in travel,

Kristin

Why I Travel

June 18, 2013 by Kristin Winet 13 Comments

I’ve noticed that a lot of travel bloggers lately are writing and sharing posts specifically dedicated to “why they travel.” Check out any travel blog–you’ll see what I mean. Not surprisingly, a lot of them offer anecdotes of heartbreak, boredom, apathy, curiosity, and a desire to see the world (the usual suspects). And it makes sense–readers want to know how and why the people they read got into this whole messy business in the first place. And it certainly helps put many bloggers into context.

In these posts, though, there’s usually more than just a brief story about how they contracted the travel bug. These posts often follow up with a disclaimer about how they’ve been able to do it: some talk about jobs that allow them the freedom to travel, some admit a lack of interest in material possessions, some talk about how they sold their house, their car, cashed in their IRAs, and headed out unabashedly into the horizon, and some have a really big savings account from a well-paying job they no longer have. Many emphasize that anyone can travel if they want to, given a restructuring of priorities and an understanding that living or traveling abroad can be all the more cheaper than staying at home. There are stories of redemption, of change, of enlightenment, and of being an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. And I’m certainly not immune to this: I’m one of these travel bloggers, too! Even on my own About Me page, I made sure to make the important rhetorical move of alerting people that I don’t have a financial backer and I haven’t inherited a fortune, because of course I don’t want people to get the impression that I’m a privileged girl from the West.

Because, quite frankly, that’s exactly, 100%, without-a-doubt, what I am.

I was born straight into middle-class America to two incredibly loving and supportive parents who’ve never let me down and who’ve always made sure I had what I needed. I had a tough time finding my direction early in life, and I faltered a lot in college about what I wanted to do with my life. So, boyfriendless and armed with the luxurious college degree of Spanish literature (which was possible due to my first trip abroad, a fantastically liberating and inspiring summer session in Valencia, Spain, the trip to which I owe a lifetime of wanderlust), I decided to do what I’ve always had the privilege of doing: I went again the grain and moved myself to Colombia for a while. By that time in my young life, I had met so many other travelers, and not only ones from the United States–I met travelers from across the Americas, from Europe, from Africa, and from all over Asia. We were all–and still are–searching for something, for the kind of awareness that comes from a grappling with the self and the self’s cultural identity. (And I mention these places to suggest that my privilege is not uniquely American, but it is also not universal.) I made the decision–because I was able to make the decision–to devote my life to trying to make it as a writer, as a storyteller, and now, as an amateur photographer. And so far, it’s been no piece of cake, but I’ve got a lot of gumption and a lot of words up my sleeves. And I can’t wait to see where life takes me next.

I’ve met many people in my travels who respond to this decision in two ways. The first reaction is one of incredulity: “You get paid to travel?” (Um, not exactly, but that’s for another post). The second reaction, typically from those people whose reality is not one of leisure, they are often surprised and confused. For instance, I remember one moment in particular that has never left me: during an exercise at La Fundacion Esperanza in Cartagena, a place for teenage boys to come and learn life skills, a place where I was volunteering on Saturdays, we were asked to draw a picture of what we wanted out of life. When we shared our pictures, many of the boys showed images of themselves as proud fathers surrounded by a wife and children and standing in front of a two-story house with a driveway. My picture, on the other hand, was a picture of me sitting at a desk, writing, with a bookshelf behind me, my name scrawled onto the spines of some of the books. When I shared mine, there could have been crickets echoing throughout the room. One boy raised his hand. “But what,” he asked me, “is the profession?” Another looked at me. “Don’t you have children?” At that ripe age of 22, I realized that my notion of being a writer–being a travel writer, at that–was absolutely impossible for anyone else in that room to understand. Where were the rest of the my dreams, the ones these boys had dreamt about every day since they decided to leave the slums and dedicate themselves to something better? I had left those dreams out of the picture, and I was suddenly very aware of this privilege. I could work at becoming anything I wanted, I really could; that is not everyone’s universal.

And that is exactly why I travel.

Lots of us also talk about a need for a “nomadic lifestyle.” What this means, usually, is a restlessness, an inability to stay put for any length of time. It evokes a kind of necessary “traveling ethos,” a reputation built not on sitting still and smelling the roses but rather a reputation built on ephemera, a fleeting moment, a kind of being identified through refusing any other identity. While this is a kind of willful nomadism, it doesn’t quite capture the word’s original intentions, which, according to Etymonline.com, are: from Latin Nomas (genitive Nomadis) “wandering groups in Arabia,” from Greek nomas (genitive nomados, plural nomades) “roaming, roving, wandering” (to find pastures for flocks or herds), related to nomos “pasture, pasturage, grazing,” literally “land allotted,” and to nemein “put to pasture,” originally “deal out,” from PIE root *nem- “to divide, distribute, allot.” The kind of wandering associated with the “nomadic lifestyle” promoted by many of us travel bloggers is quite different from the notion of communities who had no permanent housing and who moved with the flock. (Mind you, my very first travel blog was sponsored by the domain nomadlife.org – but what did I know then? And, actually, it’s kind of a beautiful and romantic notion, so….) I don’t disparage the notion of nomadism; in fact, it’s a very important of travel blogging and marketing. What I seem to take issue with, though, is the idea that this nomadism reflects the idea of a perfect global village, a harmonious place where the writer just flits around in, untethered, unmoored to anything or anyone. For many people around the globe, this is hardly the case.

Some people (myself included) like to allude to this definition in some ways, claiming that we appreciate the kind of “slow travel” associated with getting to know local people, engaging in sustainable practices, shopping and eating locally, avoiding tourist traps, refusing the negatively-connoted word of “tourist” at all. And yet, a lot of the travel I’ve done lately is basically the antithesis to this kind of “pasturing” or “grazing;” instead, I’ve been whirled around countries by local experts, furiously taking notes and coming home with a head basically whizzing with images, conversations, ideas, and questions. I’m expected to write about and hopefully convince others to engage in similar practices and follow similar itineraries. I’m encouraged to spread the word, to be a new kind of marketeer, to engage in a kind of travel that is intimately related to tourism. I’ve done this for three reasons: 1) because I’ve been invited and the costs have been graciously covered, 2) because I am building relationships with people and organizations in the industry 3) because I adore traveling. It’s in my blood, it’s who I’ve become, it’s what I dream about when I think about my future. (The whole house/kids/retirement narrative has never been the first thing that comes to my mind–instead, my dreams are of sailing in the Andamon Sea, meeting a camel in India, dancing tango in Argentina, having the chance to physically see the places that continually fascinate my imagination and play in my dreams. That kind of thing). And it’s not that I don’t want those other things (I do!), but for the people who have the privilege of choosing, some people are homebodies, and some, well, are not.

I am not one of the homebodies. While I love a night on the couch in Tucson with my fiance Ryan, a ball of crochet in one hand and a cup of green tea in the other, these nights provide the necessary diversion from that other life–the life of living out of a suitcase, of packing and unpacking, of living with my camera slung around my neck, eyes and ears perked for the beauty and intrigue of this world. This is why I worked and wrote blog articles for 3 years before receiving a single piece of monetary compensation for it (looking back, I might not have done that, but, well, such is life). I travel because, yes, I’m selfish, curious, able-bodied, and just so happen to be a liberated woman from a democratic society that doesn’t demand a whole lot from me. I travel because my fiancee doesn’t mind (though, of course, I’d like to make my solo travels a duo at some point here). I travel because I do believe–as naively as it might be–that my ability to move my feet, speak English, and have long and interesting conversations with other people has been my life’s ultimate and random gift from the universe. I travel because I ended up being exceptionally lucky and pretty good on my feet in unfamiliar places. I travel because the world’s economy is distorted, because technology allowed us to invent airplanes, and because I didn’t necessarily want what life initially expected of me. We should always remember that not everyone has the ability to, as Mark Twain so elegantly put it, “throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” But because I could sail away, I did just that, and I consider myself very fortunate.

I think that’s where this post is taking me–encouraging me to consider all the “why’s” behind why I travel. Of course, I travel for those other delicious reasons, too: the thrill of adrenaline in an airport, the body-numbing exhaustion after an unbelievable day, the taste of a new spice, the feeling of spilling a new word from a new language off the lips, the taking of unusual photographs, the meeting of new people, the questioning of my beliefs, the sharing of culture, the finding of a really awesome souvenir in a mom-and-pop shop, the smell of a food I’ve never tasted, the awkward moments that make me wonder how I ever got around anywhere, the joy, the fear, the uncertainty, the lust, the love, the hate, and the total and unforgettable engagement with this world we all inhabit. I travel because I have an adventurous spirit, am good-spirited, and whimsical. I’m spectacularly unable to sit still and I have a very short attention span. And I’m in love with interesting narratives.

Maybe that’s what this blog is all about–sharing this stuff while keeping aware of the other stuff, that important I’m-still-one-person-in-a-big-world stuff.

So where are we now?

I’m not exactly sure yet.

This is why I am writing my own “why I travel” post.

Yours in travel,

Kristin

Writing Lesson: Is This Tucson…? Or Is This…?

February 26, 2013 by Kristin Winet 3 Comments

This week’s post is the first in a series of reflections on writing lessons. Based in part on my experience working with writing students as well as my own experience as a traveler and writer, I hope these pieces inspire you to take a journal or laptop outside and write your heart out! – Kristin

Whenever I talk with my students about writing about place, two questions inevitably come up. The first is this: How am I supposed to write about a place I grew up in my whole life? The answer to this question, I think, is easier than the second, as I usually tell them they need to ask themselves the questions travelers ask: What does Tucson smell like, for instance? Taste like? Sound like? What does the heat really feel like (none of this cliche “it’s a dry heat” cop-out)? What is the place’s history, and how do the people living there now connect to or escape from that history? Where do people gather? Eat? Drink? Play? What are the stereotypes about Tucson? Are they real? Exaggerated? Based on false pretenses? Completely off-the-wall? You can write about your own backyard as if you’ve never been there before, provided you step outside of your daily routine and embrace the weirdness and contradictions that every place inevitably has.

The second question I’m often asked is this: How can I write about a place that’s so schizoid? Yes, schizoid. If you’re not privy to the lingo of 18-year-olds, this means, quite frankly, that they believe this city to be schizophrenic. As in, one street looks like it’s come out of a magazine advertising the swanky and pristine desert lifestyle of the rich and famous–full of three-story adobe mansions landscaped with the most gorgeous succulents and Mexican tile on the market–and the next street is full of dilapidated street signs, houses with paint literally peeling off of them, trash in the gutters, as if the world forgot about it a long time ago. That’s the strange thing about Tucson–we don’t bulldoze old things here. We let them rot, fall to pieces, become part of the past without regard to how they look to the present. I haven’t seen many places like this in the United States, a country that seems to fear the past and anything that has even the slightest trace of rust, dirt, age, or peeling.

(By the way, if you’re not convinced, next time you’re in Tucson, let me know, and I’ll give you directions to the airplane grave yard, which is, I confess, actually a tourist attraction here).

Anyway, here’s an example I used with my students last week about why writing about place is a complicated process. I would like to preface this by saying that I love both of these photos for different reasons.

Photo #1. Tucson: The Southwest for Real. This photograph, taken by the Arizona Board of Tourism, presents an image of Tucson that is iconic, steeped in legend and Hollywood myth, and downright colonial. For one, in the five years I have lived here, I have never, ever seen a cowboy in a wide-brimmed hat romping around on his steed in the middle of the desert. The only place I’ve seen horses and cowboys is in the official annual rodeo, an event that, yes, is a state-wide holiday and that, yes, has the public schools closing for two days every year so that everyone can attend. Even still, though, I have never put Tucson and cowboy together in my mind as something contemporary or even remotely realistic.

And yet, when I see this photo, what do I immediately think of? Well, that’s easy: Tucson. But not a Tucson I know–a Tucson imagined.

From Uniglobe’s Travel Times – Photographer Arizona Office of Tourism

Photo #2: Flickr photo from a Flickr member who does not describe herself as a professional photographer.
What I love most about this photo is its apparent lack of concern for composition, and yet, it actually tells a really interesting story. For one, this photo reminds me of the Tucson I first saw when I flew in for the first time with only two suitcases in hand, when I immediately realized that this place was a lot more complicated than the images I’d seen on the internet. Secondly, this photo is steeped in unusual contradictions–the motel sign falling apart, the trailers, the truck wash sign, the lack of any kind of mountain range or nature landscape, the multiple “for sale” signs peppering the perimeters in different ways, the fact that this picture is taken from a zooming car going, I imagine, 75 miles per hour down the highway. This photo is so full of fodder for looking, for thinking about “ruins” and what gets left behind, for considering what happens with development and highway culture, for considering what doesn’t happen. This is also the Wild West–this is also the same city as the one above. But there’s no cowboy traipsing through this one…only cars.

Are both of these places Tucson? Can they both be Tucson? If you’re a writer, how can you ever sift through the massive amounts of information a place affords you? Can you write about a trailer park and a rusting sign amidst no sign of nature at all (except for a scrub or two in the back behind the crooked power lines) and a magnificent horse galloping through the dusty mountain range with a cowboy on his back? If you write about one but leave out the other, what does that omitting say?

Talking with an editor of a travel magazine after submitting some photographs from a place I have recently visited, I realized how visually constructed our contemporary notion of place is. The first image up there? That’s Tucson–for real, apparently. The second? That’s Tucson too.

What I’ve taken from thinking about and giving this lesson to students is that as writers of travel we must be considerate of places, of their grooves, their nuances, their histories, and their people. We must remember that place is often as complex, really, as the people who live there–or who are just passing through.