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I'm just home from Palau (Micronesia), New York City, Arizona, Los Angeles and a yoga-and-wine retreat. Next up Alaska, Rome, Malta, Lago di Como and Ireland. Potential trips include Bonaire, Barcelona, the Maldives, Chile, New Zealand, Mongolia and the Pacific Crest Trail. Please email if you have editorial needs in these areas.
Recent destinations include Ischia, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, Alaska, Norway, Botswana, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. I also explored Milan, Venice, Bath, London, Spokane and Louisiana Mardi Gras. Ample material remains for further articles.
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I explored my divorce with an
essay, At the Seashore with
Medea: A marriage unravels
in Athens. Buy the book or
learn more at its website.
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Roughing It In Style
Cocktails in the wilderness, hiking boots
in the boardroom: wild child Seattle balances work and play
travelgirl Feb/Mar 2008
Its 600,000-odd inhabitants care more about snow-pack than stock options and society galas ... “This may be the slacker-genius capital of the world,” a native once observed.
Love for the Land
A deal for you and nature (voluntourism)
January 17, 2008
This is real work. Not some "green-washed" publicity exercise. Volunteers completed 85-90% of the labor on this trail spur.
MSN Daily Access
January 2008
Columns included banger rallies; a desert rave in Wadi Rum, Jordan; heart-healthy spas; and the Lightning Field, New Mexican land art.
Prosecco and the City
Ten reasons to hold your next singleton celebration in Milan
travelgirl, Dec/Jan 2008
Mid-April's Salone – dedicated to furniture and all things haute for the home – has outstripped the fashion extravaganzas here. Everyone's sucking in their cheeks and sucking down their featherweights in saffron risotto. Parties blur between galleries. Art installations jam traffic. The Brera district boils, then reduces down to a seven-day block-party in Moschino, Miu Miu, and MaxMara.
Pink Tanks
Despite an explosion and freak currents,
divers and cancer survivors make the world a rosier place
Northwest Dive News, December 2007
Michelle Reid drifts towards the sandy bottom, bookended by instructors. Water scares this Maple Valley mother. She hyperventilates snorkeling. "As a kid, I cried for the first year of swim lessons." Still, Reid descends five feet, ten feet, twenty – eyes wide, bubbles shiny as Mylar balloons in spruce-colored Puget Sound.
MSN Daily Access
December 2008
Columns included pod hotels, the Quebec Snow Bath, where to learn to dive and riding African elephants – who are volunteers.
MSN Daily Access
November 2008
My new column included ghetto tours and Dolce&Gabbana's new eatery in Milan.
Pink Tanks
travelgirl Oct/Nov
Mermaids, trade your seashells for a wetsuit and scuba tank to combat breast cancer. America's Dive for the Cure debuts October 5-7 in Seattle, Washington.
The tide's out and dinner's on
Harvesting seaweed on the shore
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 22, 2007
My foot hooks the prey and draws it close. Then I cut through the cold, satin flesh of a bullwhip kelp. I am licensed to kill with an $11 shellfish and seaweed permit. Earthwalk Northwest, a School of Primitive Living Skills, is teaching me to "eat the beach" on Lopez Island in the San Juan archipelago.
Skimming the Surface
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 18, 2007
The [four-person racing kayak] arrows across the lake. The glide is like that of a rope swing, except it goes on and on, and we never splash land. Caught in the midsummer night's dream of it all, I find the sport irresistible.
Spoonful of sugar
Slovenia's first design-hotel and spa
Road and Travel, June 2007
The spa's list echoes its broad-church ethos, stretching even toTibetan gong treatments. The clear-eyed, beaming therapist places bronze-colored cauldrons around my body, then taps them with a padded mallet. Apparently the "singing bowls" are harmonically aligning my aura. "Some tart's banging pots on me," the Monty Pythonesque part of my brain trills.
A Look Under the Hood
Cold-water divers explore Puget Sound's jade underbelly
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 22, 2007
I grew up on the coast of Puget Sound, galloping along drift logs and squelching across mud flats. Yet the inland ocean remained a cipher: a reflecting pond for the snow-shadowed mountains. Now I've plunged through the looking glass.
At the Seashore with Medea
A Marriage Unravels in Athens
Greece, A Love Story; March 2007
Plum shadows outline the Parthenon. This buttress of land, the art upon it – defying time and Turkish detonations – are so ancient. The moon even more so, a bruised apricot. My woes, suspended briefly between the two, have no weight.
Tangled up in Wild Blue
Single State of the Union, February 2007
The ship slid from the dock, my dreams churning in its wake. I wanted so very badly to go, go, go, get gone from the tulip fields, the silage and sleech of Skagit Valley.
Electric Ladyland: Medellin, Colombia
Road and Travel, February 15, 2007
Never mind that smugglers, paramilitaries, leftist guerillas and government troops still clash in the corrugated countryside. A new nose or cleavage costs about 60 percent less than in the States. Andale!
Lions, luxury and lessons learned
Bank Travel Mangement, Winter 2007
Southern Africa is a potent place, one that evokes big-screen reactions from locals and visitors alike.
Surfing the Wild Pacific Rim
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 18, 2007
Tofino – halfway up Vancouver Island's west coast – is one of the world's premier cold-water surf sites. Squeezed into wetsuits, hoods and booties, the locals ride year-round. Even during a winter storm surge.
Norway: Old Brave World
Road and Travel, December 2006
The Zodiac slaps up the fjord. I crouch in the bow, one hand laced under the plastic lifeline, the other holding my fleece hat. Norway smells of firs and salmon and saltspray. The Arctic breeze holds an undertone of iceberg too.
Honduras: Calm as a Hurricane's Eye
Winner of the Lowell Thomas bronze, 2007, adventure writing
Road and Travel: Everything in Honduras is slow, slow as I've never experienced. Heat leaches muscle fiber, skeletal strength and all ambition. Coral sand grits under my bare feet, after the espadrilles unlace. Even the lightning pulses long and lazy on the ocean's horizon. Tropical diving downshifts yet another gear, if such a thing is possible.
Alaska: Bears Behind Trees
Road and Travel, September 2006
In Alaska, I hope to miss the forest for the bears. And indeed the state wantonly strews them everywhere: bears prowling through coastal waterfalls, bears nosing in roadside berry patches, bears charging across tidal flats.
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