In 1988, wearing a High School letterman jacket one size too large and braces minus the wire that I habitually removed, I entered Lewis and Clark College. Carl Sagan's Cosmos yet ruled the universe and Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth was the preferred stocking stuffer for many a Lewis and Clark freshman. Two of...Read More

Crossing boundaries in their disparate forms is the single greatest purveyor of wisdom in travel abroad. With each boundary crossed comes a deeper awareness of place. And, sense of place is what separates the traveler from the tourist. In 2003 I led twelve U.C. Santa Barbara students on a six-week field course to Fiji. As...Read More

My last border crossing into a communist country was ten years ago: a horseshoe up through Norway and down into the iron belly of the Russian rust belt. Entering Vietnam airspace, I felt the same angst/excitement that I knew on that midnight crossing into the Red World. Our approach mirrored the same flight path used...Read More