by Genice Jacobs In 2004, Genice Jacobs traveled halfway around the world to Almaty, Kazakhstan to adopt her daughter Jiana. She kept a blog to record her journey, both to Central Asia and to motherhood. Saturday, November 13, 2004 The Beginning: Thinking, Planning, and Worrying It’s been a long, windy, and fortunately not-too-bumpy road since…
by Dianne Ancona The African coast was within sight. Though a day trip to Morocco wasn’t what I had imagined for my first trip to Africa, it was a start. As I stared out at the cobalt-blue water and watched the colossal Rock of Gibraltar shrink behind us, a single dolphin leapt from the water…
by Julie Ferro Aletch Glacier, high in the Swiss Alps. With both trepidation and excitement, I allow myself to be tied to eight other people, single-file, about three feet apart from one another. Our guide, the very experienced and well-known Art Furrer, ties himself at the head of the line to form a ten-person dragon….
by Marcie J. Bushnell Over 500 kinds of lichens and moss blanket the lava fields. It’s nature’s way of softening the rugged, mostly treeless “moonscape” that greets us as we exit the sleek Icelandair aircraft in Keflavik, Iceland. My twenty-six-year-old daughter and I exchange glances and smiles as we pass through the modern, minimalist airport…
by Maureen Stone I love calypso music and I love Trinidad, the land of calypso! From the time of my first visit to Trinidad in 1966, however, I have been warned about how dangerous this beautiful island is—certainly not the sort of place where a woman should go hiking on her own. Yet at four…
by Sharyn Smith I have returned from Mount Everest relatively unscathed, if not unaffected. The trip was brutal: driving for two straight days there, and two more back, in a luggage truck with three chain-smoking, butter-tea drinking, yak-eating Tibetans who spoke no English, and were apparently unable to understand my Tibetan. All attempts at communication…
by Sharon Spence Lieb Turquoise Lake Beauvert dazzles from every cozy corner of our Jasper Park Lodge cabin. “Turn off that TV,” she demands. “Don’t answer your cell. Forget email. Come. Someone wants to meet you.” We ignore the pretty lake. Read on the couch, nap in bed. Flip through fifty cable channels of bad…