Bespoke Traveler

In this episode of Bespoke Traveler, we return to childhood play on an abandoned island. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bespoketraveler.substack.com/subscribe

Taking a night walk through a new city to experience the transformations that occur after the sun sets. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bespoketraveler.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Bespoke Traveler's podcast, we dig our fingers deep into the soil to examine the complexities of being a gardener. Bespoke Traveler is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. For more travel tales, head to our website at www.bespoketraveler.com . This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get...

Welcome to the Bespoke Traveler podcast. A space where curious explorers can listen to immersive tales connecting nature, culture, and identity. Come journey with us as we question ideas of home, deepen relationships with place, trouble notions of border, and challenge our perceptions of memory. In this episode of Bespoke Traveler, we look at how trees can teach us about resilience, patience, and...

In this episode of Bespoke Traveler we ask questions about the weather and our relationship to it.   This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bespoketraveler.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Bespoke Traveler podcast. A space where curious explorers can listen to immersive tales connecting nature, culture, and identity. Come journey with us as we question ideas of home, deepen relationships with place, trouble notions of border, and challenge our perceptions of memory. In this episode of Bespoke Traveler, we tramp among winter paths in search of wisdoms found in the seas...

The kitchen is a laboratory where every experiment is a lesson in paying attention to detail, honing all our senses, and practicing our patience. In this episode of Bespoke Traveler we explore the many magical alchemies that take place in the preparation of our food. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bespoketravele...

Exploring the liminal spaces where shore and horizon meet This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bespoketraveler.substack.com/subscribe

In summer I never assume anything. The season is full of mirages: oceans shimmer atop asphalt pavements, lightning bolts camouflage as white heat, shadows promise refuge only to vanish in ether. Days, which are supposed to tread slowly like treacle running through the briar patch, hasten with wings from seaside to summit. I trample dirt roads at glacial pace, my pack settling into the grooves of s...

Having wandered round the earth, I face again a home of sorts and understand how Odysseus felt. As the ferry approaches the breakwater, my nerves rise. The Atlantic sprays hitting my face smell of brine and eelgrass, fragrance of my bucolic holidays. I recollect how seasick I was the first day we came over from Hyannis and how heartsick at leaving these shores. Unlike Homer’s conqueror, I am not r...

Every day the world chooses a darker turn, a crueler path. Apathy seems the best course against this indecipherable savagery, this unspeakable calamity. Like a turtle, I want to crawl within my shell and disappear. So I take myself to the mountains in springtime where its verdurous raiments can soothe my rattled nerves. Here the fog plays hide and seek with the treetops and the decaying leaves squ...

Silence takes many forms. At Cathedral Gorge State Park upon the indigenous territories of the Fremont and Southern Paiutes in Nevada it is the absence of wind whistling through the clay canyons. A deep, sacred silence. A contemplative silence in which I can detect the scurry of a mottled lizard seeking shade. It half-heartedly performs five push-ups on an outcrop before scampering back into the m...

Clenched by steel wire one-hundred-fifty feet in the air, everything below is a blur of green and brown. The wind swishes its tail. The hearty redwoods, over three-hundred feet in height, loom overhead, a silent grove of leviathans. For the first time, I experience the lifestyle of flying squirrels and howler monkeys, jetting branch to branch in their habitats. A system of pulleys and cables zoom...