Jonathan Larson

Sift the clutter of this festival season in the northern hemisphere, and a few things do answer the test of longevity.  They are elements recognized – claimed and treasured – by many of our global neighbors.  At some primal level it turns out, we do yet share ancient impulses, perhaps unawares, with kin distant to […]

I remember riding through the steam-vintage railyards of India and seeing the hopelessly sooty signs on lamp posts and station walls: Cleanliness is next to godliness.  The kind of thing Gandhi might have said at his ashram though others say John Wesley got there first. It’s a sentiment shared around the world.  Stop for a […]

During Africa’s struggle to be free, and as Angola’s Portuguese colonial system crumbled, a scramble brought rival forces into the field fighting for advantage in the independence that was sure to follow.  I ventured into that maelstrom from neighboring Congo to assess what relief supplies might be useful to the victims of that strife in […]

Hercules, the ancients say, in his wandering and labors came to the western limit of the Mediterranean where a great mountain, the Atlas, lay athwart his path.  Not one for nuance, some say in the fury of madness, he smashed a passage through the ranges, and so appeared the straits of Gibraltar, the headlands left […]

Is there any corner of Africa quite the equal of the Barbary Coast –  what the modern world knows as Morocco?  Its northern shore, a rocky buttress ‘gainst the turquoise tide of the Mediterranean.  Where Punic and Roman ruins sit astride the bluffs and valleys.  Where the High Atlas shelter the Amazigh, the Berbers, once […]

You will know that you have strayed from well-traveled routes when you arrive at a riverbank and there is no bridge.  Since ancient times, and especially in rainy backcountry, this is an epic scene: river landings with dugouts drawn up on the strand.  The figure of boat and ferryman is so central to human experience […]

Say ‘fireworks’ to most any soul on the planet – child or adult – and there will follow a fountain, a vivid geyser, of story.  The pyrotechnics celebrated in lore and poetry are rooted after all in spiritual struggle: their boom and flash created to drive away shades of misery and misfortune.  But they end […]

Somewhere between the jet set and the purist pilgrims who shamble along the Camino de Santiago are those who ride the ‘bus’, a shortened form of the more picturesque 19th cent. French term, ‘omnibus’.  It’s that ‘omni’ part that gives pause – omni being Latin for ‘all’.  Which explains a great deal about bus travel […]

Paul McCartney, so the story says, retreated alone to a farm in Scotland once where he sat at the piano gazing on the trace of a road meandering wild heather, the moors and lochs beyond – in short, his life – and penned a ballad: ‘The Long and Winding Road’. Were there a list of […]

Come September 11, 2021, by presidential decree, the last troops of a Western alliance will strike their regimental colors, stow their gear and board massive transports for rear bases in Europe, the Middle East, and North America.  They leave behind razor-wire perimeters, bunkers, the tangled wreckage of warfare, frightened collaborators, and trauma as far as […]

On the southern fringes of the Kalahari across the interior of southern Africa stretch ranches and dryland farming in all directions.  Here and there outcrops and hills break the monotony of the plain often overlooking seasonal streams and rivers.  Near such a ridge, in 1924 the unlikely settlement of Taung (‘lion’s den’) was the epicenter […]

Spring may be the season of daffodils and birdsong, but a shift in the jet stream also lifts a curtain on the annual drama of tornadoes.  We once sat enthralled while listening in disbelief to the nonchalance of friends in a Tulsa, OK suburb who described the ravages of a storm that passed within hailing […]

Not only the road to Mandalay, but city streets the length and breadth of Myanmar stream today with protestors flashing the three-fingered salute, with flotillas of motorcycles and scooters, monks in maroon robes, even the occasional elephant.  Unseen are the armies of government workers, railway staff, nurses and doctors, power plant personnel and bank tellers […]

Few cities in Europe can match Barcelona for its storehouse of cultural riches.  The tourist industry knows it only too well, sending 30 million visitors coursing its way every year.  Very nearly all of them were surrounding the famous Sagrada Familia basilica the day we arrived by train from Valencia. We’d been foresighted enough to […]

No darkness on earth can match the depth of a desert night.  No firmament of stars can rival the spectacle of a desert sky.  For the most part it is only the drifted face of sand and the beasts of the wild who are witness to such silent marvels. Except a small fraternity of herders […]

I traveled with a friend one day to visit a woman healer in a village at the edge of the Kalahari.  She received us eagerly as we chattered about her late father, a prominent bishop whose mantle she had taken up.  She set out some hand-crafted folding chairs slung with strips of cowhide of a […]

Make your way, as we did once, southeast from Marrakech up the Ourika Valley into the Atlas mountains of Morocco, and you could well find yourself on the second floor of a stone cottage, sipping sheeba, a hot cup of Berber hospitality.  With the roar of snow melt in the background, our host explains that […]

Proverbs, often referred to as ‘deep language’, are a ready mark of traditional societies.  And their absence from everyday discourse marks a shift away from ‘wisdom’ toward a knowledge, or information culture. I once heard a hacker say that creeping into a guarded digital domain is like breaking into a gothic cathedral; finding architecture replete […]

When we set out on travels to remote locations, I’ve made it a habit to carry in my satchel a small shortwave radio even in this age of the internet.  Deep in the Himalaya, in equatorial rain forest, or the desert interiors of Africa, a small hand set with fully extended aerial has permitted access […]

Those who scan the faith scene of the Western world continue to write obituaries for the forlorn churches of Europe, where a handful of stubborn faithful gather on appointed days to full-throated baroque organ and sonorous liturgy.  A wistful poet has named this scene ‘the threadbare brocade of a passing age.’ Some years ago I […]

A mail-in ballot has arrived at our address here in Durham, North Carolina.  It came with little fanfare: the clack of our mailbox lid as the postman made a noontime delivery.  I am aware that the ether is stormy now with quarreling about the transaction it represents.  And heavy clouds forewarn of what is yet […]

I have a fascination for islands.  It surfaced when this eight-year-old roamed Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’, castaway on the ‘Isle of Despair’. These penchants rise somehow from the depths of psyche, roused in me by childhood stops where island names ring like rhapsody: Hawaii, Formosa (now Taiwan), Honshu, Cebu, Penang, Java, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).  Then, […]

Picture a holiday charity fundraiser under chandeliers, the well-heeled rubbing elbows midst chatter about Christmas markets in Bavaria and the beaches of Bali.  My wife and I found ourselves there by some social accident last year, and, drinks in hand, worked our way to a quiet corner table where a 60-ish couple sat alee of […]

The river steamers of yesterday, with a blast of their whistles, would cast off hawsers from the Hooghly River docks opposite Kolkata, and drift gently with the current past the grime and smoke of an Asian city into a gloaming of the world’s largest river delta, the Sundarbans.  There the waters of the sacred Ganga, […]

The interface of the wild and the world of human settlement is dicey territory to be sure.  Whether the elephants of the Okavango, the orangutan of Sumatra or the pangolins of Asia, wild creatures everywhere face unfriendly odds.  Jacquie Oberg, now of small town Minnesota, should know.  Some of those creatures ended up in her […]

As nations flail now for want of sage, moral leaders even while stalked by ruin, it would be fair to ask where we might turn our eyes.  What moorings might serve as safe harbor for the fashioning of a hereafter?  What landmarks can reliably guide us though peril?  While the coordinates of that location may […]

Trapped in the talons of trouble, our impulse may be to search the horizon in hope of deliverance, a stroke of fate that would banish threat and summon back the bluebirds.  Such a pity!  Since the strength to prise open the grip of suffering might well lie unrecognized just over the back fence. It was […]

I sat listening in the courtyard of an elderly friend in the ramshackle outskirts of a Kalahari town.  He was giving his account of the origins of the HIV pandemic.  It went something like this: HIV has come to our country by design of ill-willed foreigners*.  We know that diseases native to this part of […]

As contagion stalks our planet, cities shuttered behind cordons militaires, cruise ships denied port or anchored in a sea of troubles, and hospitals ominous with taut, costumed creatures, a back story has been mass flight in search of safety.  An early report estimated that nearly half of Wuhan’s 11-million population fled as the handwriting went […]

          Pebble On The Tongue* “The longest journey is the journey inwards …         quest for the source of (one’s) being.”             Dag Hammarskjold, fr. Markings Almost 59 years ago, Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations, his plane on fire, plummeted […]

I met John in a garret office just off Maryland Ave. in the Capitol Hill district of Washington, DC.  His tired, disheveled attire might have suggested life on the street, but spritely expression and chatter hinted at something beyond that.  We whiled away the time, and this is the story he told. Like many in […]

The treeless hills of South Africa’s Eastern Cape roll down to the Indian Ocean where they form the Wild Coast: the sea, the wind and spray pounding a rocky shore.  Here and there lie pocket beaches where rivers tumble down to meet the surf. That beauty has attracted seaside resorts and casinos for the well-heeled, […]

National Highway 1 from Kabul to Kandahar, will bring you under the walls of the storied, but now humbled, city of Ghazni.  Its ramparts once sheltered brilliant Persian poets the likes of Hakim Sanai, the ‘eyes of Sufi poetry’ and inspiration to Rumi.  The memory of that elegance now in tatters, the city suffers one […]

There is a traveler’s proverb in southern Africa, “Tsela e kgopo, ga e latse nageng.’  (The crooked road will not leave you sleeping in the wild.) It applies on the road to Kabul just as readily as elsewhere. True to the proverb’s implied wisdom, the tarmac – but, gated – highway at Surobi (see previous […]

High in the Maluti mountains of southern Africa, there is a pass for ponies and trekkers called ‘Molimo O Nthuse’ (God help me!), the prayer of mountain travelers everywhere.  Thin air, vagaries of sleet and snow, rude slopes, snake-like footpaths, solitude; all can conspire with lethal effect. Prayer is sometimes the traveler’s only recourse. Such […]

If you should think the city of Peshawar is just another edge-of-the-mountain town, dust-blown, tattered and gusty with bluster and intrigue, consider this: the very heart of the old quarter is called ‘Qissa Khwani’, the Storytellers’ Bazaar.  Not the bazaar of carpets or of silks, not of walnuts, spices or dried fruit, not of camels, […]

On the cusp of summer monsoon, but still swirled in dust and heat, our caravan assembled in the town of Raiwind outside Lahore.  Behold! a three-passenger, improvised roof-rack atop the little red VW station wagon, a small trailer with hitch, an assortment of personal and camping gear, four school-leavers, two adults, their young daughter and […]

Northeast of the power-stepping guards at the Wagah crossing (see previous post, MOAR IV) there is a telling scene about what borders born of duress can inflict on a populace.  Punjab is the cradle of Sikh faith, home to the great majority of its faithful who now live in India. On a clear day, from […]

It’s ticklish business navigating a cemetery.  There’s that saying, “Someone’s walking on my grave,” prompted by some chill running up the spine.  Travel thoughtfully, not least the great river valleys of the world, and you find stories of near cosmic scale lying at your feet, stories that send a shiver through the soul. A traverse […]

The Woodstock School campus, midst wooded foothills, has commanding views of some of India’s most sacred geography.  (When Pearl Buck visited she referred breathlessly to the school setting as ‘vertical real estate.’) To the south and east winds the course of the Ganga (Ganges) whose sprawling valley is the axis of Indian civilization.  To the […]

In the city of Helsingborg, a ferry ride across from Helsingor (or, ‘Elsinore’, if you’re drafting a tragedy called ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark’), there was once a youth hostel on the northern edge of town midst wooded grounds.  It sat on a rise looking down on the city, on the straits to the Baltic Sea, […]

If, having been whisked to a secret southern metropolis and you were there set free on the streets, you’d be forgiven for believing you’d found yourself in Brussels, Vienna or Berlin.  In truth you would be in the Paris of Latin America, Buenos Aires, whose name translates as ‘Fair Winds’.  Famous for bumpy politics, for […]

They’re up there still.  Hundreds of tents pitched in the rubble field at base camp on Everest.  Climbers – some, at best bricoleurs – and their Sherpa guides wait for that window of clear days before the monsoon that offers some chance of summiting the mother of all mountains, Chomolungma, 29,035’ of rock, icefall, crevasses, […]

The city of Brussels takes itself pretty seriously.  It devotes itself to the tricky business of holding together a quarrelsome bilingual country, to projects like the 28-member European Union and to the colossus known as NATO.  The city bristles with all-work, no-play diplomats, soldiers, journalists and lobbyists. Whatever sunshine might be left under such dour […]

Delia Owens, wildlife conservationist and briefly a neighbor in the Kalahari, has now written a crime novel set in coastal Carolina.  ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’, the title taken from her mother’s term for the back-of-the-back-of-beyond where the wilds harbor impossible beauty and secrets, is a nod towards the music – the exquisite music – inherent […]

Our family traipse – not unlike Viking forbears who once sailed the Volga and traded wares on the Silk Road –  began long ago in a Minnesota winter, with ports of call like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Penang, Rangoon and Chittagong, mostly aboard plucky freighters.  In time, we came to live on the verge of the […]

Scattered across southern Africa, at highway intersections, as at village crossroads, an unnoticed dynamic is in play.  In the dead of night, a traditional healer has crept on to the scene and buried there, in secret, the tools of a diviner’s trade: small bits of bone, shells, sundry coins, buttons and stones.  In a region […]

From earliest times, water sources and wells have been the scene of rare encounter, of betrothal and alliance, of secrets, struggles and dreams, yes, and of slaking thirst for mortal and beast, nowhere more earnestly than in the arid interiors of the planet’s landmasses.  When desert winds drive storms of dust and sand, when the […]

Plant yourself in the sand of the Kerala seashore, the Arabian Sea creaming at your feet, a warm westerly caressing your face.  This is the Malabar coast. Spice garden of the East, fantasy of mariners drawn by the fragrance – and fortunes – of cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and clove. They came by turn from ancient […]

The story board of sacred writ recounts that in their beginnings, humankind and the animals were created on the same day, the sixth day (Genesis 1:24-31).  This arrangement surely suggests some commonality, perhaps even fellowship, while serving also as a check on our hubris. That whatever the glories of angel-flight inspiration and achievement, we can […]

Consider the French word, dépaysé.  It aptly describes travelers who after long east-west travels clamber off holiday jets in the likes of Hawaii, the Costa del Sol, Capetown or Baku.  The French term means literally ‘un-countried’. Otherwise, in English, it can mean ‘dazed’ or ‘bewildered’. For moderns accustomed to the reach of transcontinental jets, it […]

Faithful rule-of-thumb in travels: the richest stories lie in the side streets, the smoky recesses of courtyards and tea stalls.  My Sunday meander down an alley in Phnom Penh ran true to form. Having heard the account of a young Khmer musician’s love of a grandfather (see previous post), I waited in a church anteroom […]

On a side street in downtown Phnom Penh, Cambodia, you’ll find a homely little Anglican church.  If you saunter by of a Sunday, as I did not long ago, you might notice that several people linger on the premises after morning services.  It was enough, at my visit, to draw me in, on the chance […]

There is hardly any place name, with the possible exception of ‘Shangri-La’, that is quite so evocative as ‘Mandalay’. Nearly all of its associations for the West are Kipling-esque ‘images of oriental kingdoms and tropical splendor’*. Dozens of book titles, songs and hotel names have ridden the crest of those images to fame and riches. […]

Come November 22nd this year, discriminating families at Thanksgiving tables will sit up – unawares – to turkey stuffed with the makings of an epic and delectable tale.  It is the tale of ‘manoomin’, the sacred wild rice that grows across northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the prairie provinces of Canada. Stand on the cat-tail fringes […]