#14: The Living Great Lakes: In Search of the Heart of the Inland Seas by Jerry Dennis (2003)

Lake Erie taught me how important it is to watch the sun set. It was the summer of 2010, and I was in the middle of my divorce. The semester, my worst ever, had just ended, followed immediately by a whirlwind trip to China. I had a younger woman giving me the yo-yo treatment. I needed to figure out a way to calm the tumult in my life.

So for nearly a week, in early June, I found myself a spot along the breakwall that stretches out from Walnut Beach toward the lighthouse that guards the entrance to Ashtabula’s habor. I watched the sun, bright as a blood orange, dip to the horizon and vanish into the lake. Full story »

#12: About This Life by Barry Lopez (1998)

The pieces collected in Barry Lopez’s About This Life profess to be “journeys on the threshold of memory.” They take the shape of essays, travel stories, and memoirs, although Lopez firmly plants them all in the first-person perspective. Most relate in some way to a specific place. At the heart of the book, though, his essay “The American Geographies” speaks most directly to the importance of landscape—and how people continue to misunderstand and even misrepresent what that really means.

“The real American landscape is a face of almost incomprehensible depth and complexity,” he says. Full story »

#7: Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (1968)

Once more, I feel late to the party. I had no idea who Edward Abbey was, yet nearly every nonfiction writer I’ve read so far has referenced him. The only one who hasn’t was Thoreau, and that’s because Abbey hadn’t been born yet—and wouldn’t be for another sixty years after Thoreau’s death.

Abbey and Thoreau still share a connection, though: Novelist Larry McMurtry has apparently referred to Abbey as “the Thoreau of the American West.” Even the dead guy has a link to Abbey. Damn.

I stumbled on Abbey completely by accident. A blurb on his book Desert Solitaire described it as “an account of Abbey’s seasons as a ranger at Arches National Park.” Having just spent this past summer as a National Park ranger, and contemplating a similar writing project, I thought Abbey might be of use.

Boy, was he. Full story »

#6: The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau (1864)

Katahdin, some twenty miles to my west, looks like a sketch done in chalk, set against the winter-gray sky. Its ever-present clouds hover today down where its knees might be if the great mountain had them. Katahdin always has clouds. Henry David Thoreau described Katahdin as “a cloud-factory.”

“I entered within the skirts of the cloud which seemed forever drifting over the summit, and yet would never be gone, but was generated out of that pure air as fast as it flowed away,” Thoreau wrote.

The great hermit of Walden is much on my mind today as I read his book The Maine Woods and, by happenstance, retrace part of his route. Full story »

#3: Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure by Julian Smith (2010)

To prove himself to the woman he loved and her skeptical stepfather, Ewart Grogan traversed Africa, four-thousand miles from south to north. It took him two and a half years. The year was 1897.

One hundred and eight years later, Julian Smith retraced Grogan’s path in an effort to prove something to himself—although he was still trying to figure out what that “something” might actually be. In Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure, the heart Smith needs to cross is his own.

Full story »

#2: My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism by David Gessner (2011)

David Gessner’s journey down Massachusetts’ Charles River may not be Marlowesque in its scope or scale, but it’s nonetheless a trip into his own heart. He undertakes his canoe trip as a way better understand his own connection to the natural world, which he hopes will help him clarify his own conflicting ideas about being environmentally conscious.

The result: My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism. He writes:

most issuers of manifestos begin with their conclusions concluded, their concrete hardened, and their intentions, motives, and views firmly in mind, or in hand, fit to bash you over the head with. I began, on the other hand, with nothing more than questions—questions as numerous as the sources of the Charles River, and as meandering as the river itself. But trust, dear reader, that though these questions do wander, they also reach the sea, moving toward answers if not the answer.

Full story »

by Hannah Frantz

So I was thinking the other day about the number of times I thought about buying a plane ticket home. I would say it probably happened once every 2 weeks or so. As I was thinking about each of those instances I realized how happy I am that I didn’t actually follow through. I’m down to only 5 days left in Rwanda until I board a plane home, and for the first time, I can’t actually believe I’m going back. It seems really surreal.

There have been a lot of really rough times on this trip. The memorials were really emotionally trying, but on the flip side they’re what brought our group together because we were able to help each other through it. The homestay was not an easy adjustment either, but it was probably one of the best learning experiences I’ve even had. Being stared at no matter where I went and knowing that everyone perceived me as a foreigner was really trying. But now I know what it’s like to be an outsider and how to cope with that.

I feel like I’ve changed a lot on this trip, no matter how generic that sounds. Full story »

by Melissa Wood

Tilikum, a massive 22.5-foot-long orca whale living in captivity at Sea World Orlando, has been involved in three fatal incidents. The most notorious of these, the death of 40-year-old trainer Dawn Brancheau, occurred on Feb. 24, 2010.

Brancheau’s death garnered copious amounts of media attention and sparked numerous debates about the humanity of keeping killer whales captive.

Humans began capturing and putting orcas on display in the 1960s. In 1985 a female named Kalina became the first captive-born orca to survive more than a few days.

Tilikum, captured at the age of 2, off the coast of Iceland, has been living in captivity since November 1983. But since Brancheau’s death, Tilikum has been kept in almost total isolation from the other killer whales captive at Sea World Orlando, according to its representatives.
Full story »

Well, whoever it is who gave us this as our logo, and these guys as our mascots, is still around, because the new batch of official London 2012 Olympics posters was released a little while ago, and they’re pretty dreadful. Uninspired is probably a better word, since they’re among the most boring posters you will ever see. It clearly follows from the fact that whatever committee this was decided to go for name artists, rather than run some sort of competition. So we’ve got the gaggle of usual suspects. Here’s probably the best of the bunch, from Adrian Hamilton:

And here’s the lot. Full story »

Yesterday I did my third Ironman and Ms. Otherwise participated in her second.

This time it was Panama City Beach, which has a reputation as an “easy” Ironman, easy being a relative term of course. Full story »

by Hannah Frantz

Since my return from Uganda, I’ve had some time to reflect upon a lot about my travels here in Africa. I was thinking it might be useful if I came up with a sort of “advice column” blog just this once in case anyone is hoping to travel to East Africa at any point in the future.

First, I call this “My list of practical things that you should bring.”

1. Mosquito nets are a must-have. If you think you will not be bitten while you are asleep you are terribly mistaken, no matter how much mosquito repellent you use. And on that note, do take malaria pills. I recommend Malerone because I haven’t had any issues with it thus far, and some of the other ones come with concerns such as making people psychotic and causing crazy dreams. Even if you plan to sleep under a net still take the pills because the mosquitoes will find you! I have slept under a net in a bed coated with bug spray with all of the windows closed and I still woke up with bites. Full story »

by Chip Ainsworth

The cold air chased me south from New York into Pennsylvania and on through Virginia into North Carolina. “We had snow here last week,” exclaimed Sarah Edwards. “We haven’t had snow in 15 years.”

Edwards was speaking from behind her desk at the Ava Gardner Museum in downtown Smithfield, a Tar Heel town of about 13,000 that’s located a few miles west of I-95. I’d pulled in once before but the museum was closed. Now I was back to get a glimpse into the life of the woman who became the flame who “taught Frank Sinatra how to sing a torch song,” as his band arranger, Nelson Riddle, once described her.

The museum attracts about 12,000 visitors a year — mostly seniors but also “a lot of younger people interested in Old Hollywood,” said Edwards. Admission is $6 and patrons can buy a variety of souvenirs from Ava Gardner post cards to five-ounce jars of regional delicacies like sweet potato butter and moonshine jelly. Full story »

by Hannah Frantz

Editor’s Note: The author is a junior at Gettysburg College. This semester she is studying abroad in Kigali, Rwanda and has agreed to share some of her experiences and insights (as well as her frustrations) with the Scholars & Rogues community. 

_____

Recently I’ve found myself very frustrated in Rwanda. And mostly when I get frustrated it’s because of discussions I’ve had with Rwandans.

Mainly, I’ve been really irritated with perceptions of America that you encounter here. Perhaps it’s my American pessimism getting the best of me, but I find myself getting irrationally angry at the idealistic assumptions Rwandans make about America. And I get angriest when Rwandan men tell me that more than anything they want a white wife.

For starters, many Rwandans seem to believe there’s no poverty in America. Full story »

Vermont’s vaunted maples have begun to flush crimson, but the oaks stubbornly cling to their sturdy green. By Robert Frost’s hillside grave, in Bennington’s Old First Churchyard, the birch trees have breathed in autumn and exhaled it as goldenrod.

These calico mountains, having abandoned most of the “Green” of their namesake, could not make a more picturesque Frostian site. He was the poet of rock fences, spring pools, and wood piles, of snowy evenings and roads not taken, of small-town New England life and simpler times. “I am an ordinary man, I guess,” he once told the New York Times Review of Books.

Frost has been on my mind since a Saturday trip last week to an apple orchard in North Chester, Maine. Al LeBrun balanced each Courtland, each McCoun, between his fingertips like a snowglobe, showing off its delicate beauty. Full story »

A few years ago, my wife and I decided to do triathlons to stay fit. But like Goldilocks learned about beds and porridge, triathlons come in all different shapes and sizes. There are short, fun triathlons (sprints,) medium triathlons, and long triathlons (Ironmen). Ironmen involve 2.4 miles of swimming and 112 miles of biking, followed by a marathon. They are a sufficiently serious cardiac endeavor, 12 hours or more of exertion, that most triathletes only do one a year. They also require lots of specialized gear, nutrition, etc. Over time, my wife and I gravitated to Ironmen. Our event occurs in November, and at this point we have been training for almost ten months and are tired of it. I woke up with this in my head.

(Apologies to real musicians and poets.)

Old Ironman Blues
by Thirteen Hour Willie

My friends want to party
They call me from town
I can’t go meet them
In bed at sundown Full story »

by Hannah Frantz

We returned from Butare yesterday. Butare, located in the South of Rwanada, is anything but Kigali. I’ve never been much of a city girl, so it was a welcomed change for me.

On our way to Butare we made a stop at Murambi, another genocide memorial, that exists at a place where over 50,000 people were killed. The interesting thing about Murambi is that while unearthing the mass graves, they discovered that the bodies at the very bottom had been well preserved. They then removed these bodies and preserved them further so that visitors could come and see exactly what death in the genocide looked like. Full story »

by Hannah Frantz

Before I came to Rwanda, I spent a week following The New Times, Rwanda’s online newspaper, to get a sense for where the country is today. The impression that I reached was that in the 17 years since the genocide, all conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi had been resolved and that everyone was making a collaborative effort to move towards peaceful relations. In my mind, Rwanda was this utopia where, through collaborative efforts, everyone could live in harmony. I’m realizing slowly that this isn’t necessarily the case. Full story »

We noted back in 2009 an historic event. An oil tanker made its way from South Korea to Rotterdam—by way of traveling across the Northeast Passage, that region from the Bering Straight to the northern tip of Norway. This is major. For hundreds of years, nations have been searching for a Northwest Passage across North America, and this stimulated the imagination of generations of Englishmen and others as few other enterprises have done. And for hundreds of years, Russia has had two obsessions—the role of the north in the Russian character, and, as a far more practical matter, access to a year round warm weather port. I can’t speak to the first, but the second appears on its way to becoming reality.

The north, that vague unknowable land, that vague concept, that place of mystery, silence, purity, solitude and the Northern Lights. Oh, and the dumping ground for the world’s nuclear waste, air pollutants and chemical contaminants. That magnet myth, for exploration, for voyages of discovery back in the days when nations believed in voyages of discovery as expressions of national pride. Whatever it is, it is going to be trashed in pretty short order. The place is dying a slow death. Well, being murdered is more like it. Full story »

by Hannah Frantz

So far I haven’t mentioned the events of 1994, but I feel like I need to bring it up sometime, and now is as good a time as any.

Yesterday we visited the memorials at Ntarama, Nyamata, and the Kigali Memorial Centre, which serves partly as a museum. The group I was in visited the churches (Ntarama and Nyamata) first. Nothing prepares you for what you see there.

I went to Dachau with my parents a few years ago, and that was a starling experience. Full story »

I live and breathe travel. I love to see new things, but more importantly I travel to learn. To me, exploring the world firsthand has proven the most effective way to learn about the depths of people, culture and myself. Our trip from Chicago to New Orleans included a drive through seven states: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Of these seven states, I had only been to three before making this trip, which proved a unique and exciting opportunity to learn more about the hidden beauties and truths of America. Full story »