Check out these 15 examples of unusual pets kept around the world. Then next time you’re caught in the midst of some tedious debate between a cat lover and a dog lover about which is the better pet, you can just turn to them and say, “Actually, I’m more of a hippo person myself.”

During a sunset in the dunes between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the mind traverses the landscape of the soul. Photo by Michael Liberati.

At the Bay of Fundy in Maine, seventeen-meter tides uncover clay riverbeds twice a day, where those caught in the mix transform from careful and clean to completely carefree. Photo by Harold Godsoe.

A top-down view of Macchu Picchu, Peru. Photo by Gayle Lazoration.

Nothing says “I’ve reached the top!” like a well-blown stream of bubbles at the summit. Photo by Tyson Schutz.

“Hey Dad, if this is New Zealand, where’s Old Zealand? Are we there yet?”. Photo by Katrina Greitschus.

As we emerge from childhood, it is not darkness, but the light of discovery, which greets us . Photo by Jerry Maxedon.

A sunrise hot air balloon ride in Macedonia: a perfect hybrid of old and new. Photo by David Quirk.

“So what if my scalp has been burnt to a crisp? I’m living life to its fullest degree.” Photo by Chris Lynn.

Sixteen intrepid travelers, each on the same path, yet with such vastly different journeys. Photo by Deborah Gordon.

Providing and obtaining healthy food in a sustainable manner on a small farm in Costa Rica. The farm provides fresh, inexpensive, completely organic fruits and vegetables for local residents. Photo by Katy DeSantis.

It’s difficult to not feel mighty after standing on the roof of Yosemite. Photo by Rachael Taft.

On the top of Lion’s Head in South Africa. No description needed. Photo by Heather Thorkelson.

While this may be one of her first moments of reflection, it’s certainly not her last. Photo by Alicia Masemom.

“Hiking with the two dogs in central Florida.” Photo by Eva Matthews.

Amidst the landscape of the Indian Himalayas, one feels both massive and minuscule in the same moment. Photo by Adam Seper.

Though it’s not as apparent, the cow is actually making the same expression as the girl. Photo by Kaya Howe.

New Zealand: the only place in the world fit for sunbathing on ice. Photo by Manfred Greitschus.

In Mt. Cook National Park, a father and his daughter share an icy dip of relaxation. Photo by Katrina Greitschus.

It seems that when we find that we have nowhere to go, we always return to nature and its trees, and though the base of the trunk may be the strongest part, our eyes never stray from a longing to reach the top. Photo by Elena Bargo.

All for one and one for all in Costa Rica. Photo by John Suhar.

After 46 mountain hikes, there’s not much left to do but laugh with your twin sister. Photo by Sarah Ohanesian.

It’s fascinating how we can wear such an expression of looking for something in places where we have come to because we know we will find nothing. Photo by Kyle Warden.

This jumper knows not to waste a single sunset. Photo by Mike Hedge.

We send a big thanks to all those who submitted their photographs, and to KEEN Footwear for sponsoring a great competition. Keep living, searching, creating, and dreaming!

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

How do you balance what’s important in your life?

Photo by sKizzoNauta

The four of us formed a tight-knit group fresh out of high school. We traveled together, laughed and cried together, spent sleepless nights arguing over everything from politics to the personal. Time passes, though, and our personal goals came more into focus. As we each lived our lives accordingly, bit by bit, our daily experience diverged, but Adam’s approaching nuptials brings with it the spark of reconnection, an opportunity to bring our group together once more.

Adam reaches me from Florida to tell me he’s engaged. He’s already found Jayleen and Zach to tell them the good news, but it’s taken quite a few back and forth calls before he was finally able to catch me.

“What’s up?”

“How’ve you been?”

”Oh, the weather? It’s sunny. It’s always pretty sunny here. So, what’s it like there?”

I tailor my opening words for show, as if to say my life is fine without betraying my strong desire to know who you are again. It’s a way to test the waters and read the response.

Would it be too presumptuous to burst through layers of ice with blunt honesty? Is it too much to dive immediately into the dark waters beneath and say “I have no idea who you are, or who you’ve become, because I haven’t been around to know.”

What if that first rough crack isn’t hard enough to break through the surface? Will I be left standing precariously, ice pick in hand, at the edge of freezing waters, waiting for the certain click of the phone, the final note of an awkward conversation.

Photo by cbgrfx123

No, it’s better to start off with the polite opening, light and easy, designed specifically to chip away the icy surface at a gradual pace.

After a few minutes of the light stuff, it’s time to go deeper, “So how are you really? What have you really been up to?” With those words, the tempo alters from light and falsely familiar to slippery but not quite so hazardous.

Now, It’s Time To Dip My Toe In

Is it still possible to see the world the way you do? Have we slipped too far away from each other. I listen, trying to place myself in front of you as a real, tangible part of your life, but I can’t help feel I’m no more than a voice on the phone. To ease my discomfort, I talk about myself for a while. It takes a moment before you notice I’ve gone in a different direction. Do you follow? Will you you move yourself a thousand miles to stand in my life? Can you?

“Not much going on right now, “ I tell him. “Just trying to stay busy, I guess. It being the slow season and all, you know.”

“Um, no, I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“Oh, Spring is slow season for tourists here. Most people just come to Hawaii in the winter.”

“Must be nice to live on the beach. What do you do for fun?”

Photo by Smart Destinations

“I’m on a pretty remote island. We usually go to another one to hang out. We’re headed to Oahu next weekend.”

“Where?”

“To Oahu.”

“Oh, okay. Who’s we?”

Things have changed. No longer can we take for granted a general understanding of the details of our lives, but at least the ice has been broken. He wants to know more, as do I. We might as well jump feet first now, cannonball into numbing waters.

I expect a blast of shock after the splash, but the water is more temperate than I imagined. Instead of unbearable cold and distance, our conversation takes us past the outer layers of circumstance and down to the person we each know. It’s a relief to know that down below, we are both the same. It makes me miss him even more.

“By the way, he adds, “I need the measurements for your tux as soon as possible.”

“Oh yeah,” I answer apologetically. “Sorry I haven’t called you back.”

“No worries. I’m used to it already.” As always, he tries his best to sound calm and contemplative.

“Will you send me Zach’s number?” Adam asks. “I told him about the wedding, but I can’t remember if I sent him an invitation.”

Photo by Vagamundos

By the sound of it, I think Adam’s driving somewhere as we talk. I hear her voice in the background. Adam, still trying to be thoughtful and deliberate, pauses to listen. “Oh, yeah, that’s right, I need to mail you one, too.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’m used to it already.” I can almost hear him smile on the other end of the line.

After a moment, he speaks up.“I don’t think Zach will be able to make it.” Adam somewhat manages to mask the disappointment in his voice.

I’m not surprised and shake my head, green-eyed at Zach’s ability to remove himself from obligations so casually without ever having to pay for it emotionally. “Zach is just way too free to pin down,” I say. “I doubt that will ever change.”

“Probably not?” Adam says, thoughtfully. “But that’s what makes him Zach, right?”

“But Jayleen will be there,” I say. “In spite of all her bouncing around.”

Jayleen. She does her best to stay grounded, tries on personalities like jackets as she melts from solo backpacker to business woman to hipster sharing an apartment in New York City. It will be good to see her, too, after so long, whatever outer layer she’ll be wearing.

After a pause, I speak up, “So, I guess we’ll see each other in Florida.”

“Yep, see you in three weeks.” This is the point when words are finished, and silence creeps in. I can’t believe he’s getting married so soon.

As I hang up, I know there is so much more to tell, but it’s too much for one call. “Bye.”

Then the click. The final note of a meaningful conversation.

Adam cares deeply for the people in his life. Zach fights desperately to maintain his individuality, and Jayleen examines every word for underlying meaning. Me? I will always want to be in touch with them, to know their lives and loves and be there when it’s important, but I’m afraid I will never perfect the catch up dance.

1. Daniel Nahabedian: “Home” is just a roof I can rest under temporarily. I am not attached to any place, any country or location. It is more a base where I can put my belongings and come back to rest, and abandon easily to go and discover what should be considered our true Home: Earth.

2. Sarah Menkedick: Home for me is 5 p.m. on a winter evening in Ohio. It smells sharp like woodsmoke and ice, and the light has a quiet, melancholy gentleness to it that makes you sense the whole of your life passing, so short. When I was in high school I used to stare out the back windows of our kitchen at this light in the winter and think about where I was going, about the life that lay ahead. I do the same thing now whenever I go home in December; find myself looking out the windows of my parents’ farmhouse and feeling the winter and the passing of time.

3. Slava Bowman: Home means fresh, sun-kissed, home-grown colorful veggies cut up in a delicious, mouth-watering, towering feta-topped shopska salata! Mmmm…YUM!

4. Abby Leonard: Home means sitting on a porch, watching the sun set over the Sound, enjoying the wisdom that a bottle of wine brings out in friends and family. This photo was taken in Bellingham, Washington.

5. David Miller: This photo was taken at Hot Sulphur Springs along the Colorado River. Layla was looking at deer on the mountainside. We were essentially “homeless” during this time, Summer of 09, having left Seattle and basically just camping / traveling in Colorado. And yet this feels super “at home” to me. Just being together, experiencing places that Lau and I love and can now experience again for the first time with Layla. That’s what “home” means, I think: being in love with the places you find yourself and the people there with you.

6. Rebecca Kinsella: For me, returning ‘home’ in 3 months means hanging out with my brothers and sister again after two years abroad.

7. Kendra Hoffman: Home is a faded memory: my mother’s garden lingers where I once danced with my sisters among the sunflowers, and my father’s woodshed looms behind it all. Only the winter speaks the truth: we all await rebirth.

8. Nancy Harder: Home is transitioning for us right now. Home is wherever my husband, James, and my dog, Zoey, are, which will be this house in Blacksburg, Virginia on May 30. In this pic, Zoey’s scoping out the new scene on the day we closed.

9. Elga Reyes: This is home in the Philippines – but not until recently, not until Typhoon Ketsena (known locally as Typhoon Ondoy) hit my country, my hometown, all my loved ones hard. All my life I’ve only wanted to go away, to travel and experience the world, and never had I looked back and considered point zero. I am still a wanderer but now with an anchor, or better yet a return ticket to what truly counts, my family.

10. Soultravelers3: The world means home to our family as we’ve chosen an open-ended global tour lifestyle since 2006, and raised our trilingual child as a citizen of the world. Everywhere is our home and we are related to everyone! Home is where the heart is and our heart is everywhere! Home lives inside us and is the love that guides us, and which also is constantly reflected back to us by the beautiful people we meet and places we see.

11. Debra Lane: This is me experiencing “home” while with the Dogon Tribe in Mali, Africa.

12.Lindsey T Rue: Home is a place that wraps me in comfort – where I can breathe, imagine, play and gather with good friends. I’m a perpetual traveler that changes locations with the seasons, and this photo is of my gypsy caravan parked along the banks of the Taya River, Alaska, in 2008.

13.Scott Hartman: Hiking down the Escalante River in southern Utah, looking for a camp… found this sandbar with a heart on it… home IS where the heart is!

14.Jeff Bartlett: Hailing from the oil and gas town of Fort St John, located 1200 km north of Vancouver, home has always meant two things: snow and work.

15.Tom Gates: Home means dreaming about being away. This is the top of my fridge, with a hand-sewn card from Laos and a blinding digital clock from Japan. They’re the first thing I see when I stumble towards a glass of water in the morning and I will inevitably grin when I see them, no matter how morning-grumbly I am.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

What does home mean to you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Inspired by the famous PostSecret project, we invited Matadorians to share a little part of their private lives. The weird things you do when you’re alone in the house, the regrets you’ve been harboring for years, the secret resentment towards your loved ones, even the silly pleasures of your day. Anything goes.

Surprisingly, we received just a few secrets. Everybody loved the idea, but when it came to baring all, it seems there was some reluctance. What’s holding us back? Why has it become so taboo to share our feelings?

Viewing those short, intimate insights into someone’s world makes us all feel a human connection. Maybe you can let out a sigh of relief and say, “Thank God I’m not the only one.”

1. Loneliness isn’t an easy thing to admit, I’m glad you did.

2. Take the enrichment from that experience to right your wrongs. A guilty conscience is a good thing.

3. It took me awhile to comprehend the significance of a five year old writing a suicide note. I hope you find happiness, I think you will.

Community Connection

Didn’t get a chance to submit? There’s still time! Simply follow the directions in our Call For Submissions, and we’ll share your secret. It’s completely anonymous, I promise.

I have a few recommendations:

-Don’t trespass. Especially avoid fields with signs that read “No Trespassing, We Don’t Call 911″.
-Don’t slam on the brakes and veer off the highway when you spot a patch of blue in the ditch.
-Don’t trample all the flowers. Don’t allow your kids and dogs to do it either.

If you are free right now, come visit. The flowers are starting to bloom.

1. They aren’t at their peak yet, but thanks to the right weather patterns through the fall and winter, this is supposed to be an amazing year for wildflowers.

2. Central Texas is popular among both types of bikers.

3. Texan tidbit: All species of the bluebonnet are considered to be the state flower of Texas.

4. It is best to get off the crowded highways and drive the country roads. Just be respectful of private property.

5. If you can’t find a reliable wildflower spot, you can go to a wildflower farm – where this photo was taken.

6. Stuck at home? You can watch bluebonnets bloom on the Bluebonnet Cam.

7.Wildflowers popping up among the cacti.

8. Bluebonnet festivals appear in small Texas towns all through the month of April.

9. A lot of Texan families return to the same spot every year when the wildflowers bloom again.

Community Connection

Planning a trip to central Texas? Check out another photo essay on Climbing Enchanted Rock. Enchanted rock is less than 40 miles from where most of these wildflower photos were taken.

New York City’s Verdi Square, located Broadway & West 72nd Street, right across the street from the 72nd street IRC train,has a complicated history.

As one of the city’s oldest parks, Verdi Square attracted many musicians – Enrico Caruso, Lauritz Melchior, Igor Stravinsky – until in the 1960s the square became a drug-infested neighborhood filled with crime.

Today, Verdi Square is entirely redecorated and landscaped, making it one of the most high-class areas of New York City to live in. It’s also the perfect location to capture snapshots of everyday, regular people as they go about their day.

1. “If this is not a real owl, then what the heck is it doing up here in this tree?”

2.How many cell phones can you count in this image?

3. A paradise for pigeons.

4. Rainy day in Manhattan on the way to Zabars for coffee and chocolate.

5. Oh, my. Oh, my. Is that what they’re doing on Broadway these days?

6. Bicycle nomad, meet mismatched-shoe lady.

7.So is this guy happy to be having this conversation or not?

8.Who needs boring socks?

9. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!

10. Who are all these guys?

11. Spring in Verdi Square.

12. And I love you, too…

13.Meditation in the sun.

14. Hit by a taxi, this man tells his story using handwritten signs. Another sign says he was hit by an 18-wheeler and and became paralyzed due to brain damage. Which do you believe?

Community Connection

If you’re curious about life around New York City, check out more resources.

Second Life is a virtual 3D world where people create custom avatars to interact with other avatars in the online community. You can explore new cities, go shopping, attend classes, and even buy property.

This means if you’ve ever dreamt about being a rich, successful entrepreneur living in a high-rise condo, you have the opportunity to do so with Second Life. Or you could sprout wings and take on the appearance of a fairy dwelling in a giant mushroom, whatever floats your boat.

The game is extremely addictive, but with spectacular, unearthly landscapes, it’s not hard to see why.

1. “Dancing Venezia” by dell_wilberg.

2. The Flower Girl by karindalziel.

3. Be an activist. “Make Slove, not Warcraft” by moggs_oceanlane.

4. Zombie Ballet by moggs_oceanlane.

5. Falling petals on the Tokyo Peninsula by Ravenelle.

6. That’s right, your Second Life characters need to do their laundry. “Shadows@Laundromat” by Ramona.Forcella.

7.Moosh Fashion Show with models and DJ. By Ravenelle.

8.A book signing event with author Julian Dibbell, whose book ”Play Money” is available in both Second Life and in the real world. By John E. Lester.

9.Your Second Life doesn’t necessarily have to take place in human form, be creative. By BlueLinden.

10.A dating world to explore when you’ve already exhausted the real one. By Yuval_Y.

11. “Tuna Oddfellow and Shava Suntzu’s wedding in Second Life.” Not sure which one is the groom and which one is the bride. By isfullofcrap.

12. “The Show Must Go On” performs for the Raglan Shire community, by Vlan Bjornson.

Community Connection

Need a vacation? Second Life might be the future of virtual travel.

Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard are two “gen-x geeks” who live on the road full-time with their RV. They’re currently making their way across the USA, headed towards Tampa. In their words, they’re “living at the intersection of Epic & Awesome – traveling, living, working and playing full-time in a small solar powered RV, embracing nomadic serendipity.”

How could you not love a couple like that?

Their secret to living this way is total lack of debt. They’re not rich, but they don’t have credit cards, mortgages, rent payments, student loans, child support, or anything of the sort.

Here’s a glimpse into their tightly compacted life, complete with all the great technology and a fluffy cat.

1. Orion, the 2009 Oliver Legacy Elite Travel Trailer.

2. Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard, owners of Orion, their first day as full fledged RVers.

3. Kiki the kitty hanging out in the back of the RV, where Chris and Cherie have favored a full size bed over a four-person dinette typical of many RVs.

4. The back upper bin of the trailer is all that is needed for the couple’s tech gear. Here they stash a Mac Mini, a WiFi long-range antenna, a back-up drive, a small Canon printer, and a few other essentials…like books.

5. The kitchen view: occupying only about four cubic feet of space, the refrigerator comes complete with freezer and can store enough food for two weeks. The drawers are also deep and great for storage.

6. A larger view of Orion’s kitchen.

7. Fun photo art by Ben Willmore. The technique used here is “lightpainting.”

8. Cherie hard at work in her comfortable office.

9. No such thing as a hot bath here, only room for a shower in this tiny bathroom.

10. A rising moon at one of Technomadia’s campsites.

11. A curtain attached to the ceiling with suction cups helps separate the bed area from the living area when privacy is necessary.

12. Technomadia’s Burning Man camp where many Matador team members camped as well.

Community Connection

RV travel not for you? Check out some inspirational articles about traveling by cargo ship or motorcycle.

When I got home from work today, my husband Justin told me he would be away all the following week at a training course in New Mexico. That means next week I will be home alone. Again.

Justin is in the Navy, so he goes on a lot of this sort of business trip. He was away for almost 8 months in 2009. This year, while he probably won’t deploy, I’m sure I’ll find myself on my own a lot and stuck in the house by myself.

Before I met him, I could never have imagined that I would want to stay in one place for any amount of time. Justin and I both felt the same way. Our first few dates, we tacitly impressed each other by talking about all the wild things we wanted to do one day, and our shared wanderlust made it easy for us to pack his car two summers ago and move out West.

We lived in San Diego for almost a year before he deployed, and all of a sudden, I found myself located an entire country away from family and friends and an entire world away from the man I loved.

Until then, I thought not having a home was more important than having one, but when I found myself fending for myself, forging a life without my partner, suddenly developing a solid home base became a priority. I manned the fort and turned the apartment – one that had only been ours a short time — into a home.

In my spare time, –and I had a lot of it — I began to create the perfect space for us. I placed Justin’s Bahraini rug, the one a friend brought back for him a few years ago, in the living room. It takes up half the room, but it’s neat. I like it. I collected candles and tried really hard not to let his cactus die. I moved furniture around. I bought decorative knobs for our dresser, and when the Anthropologie catalog arrives in the mail, I flip directly to the home décor section.

What exactly was I doing here? And who was this person I had become? I thought we were a couple who lived for adventure and defined ourselves by the desire to be free, not to be tied down. The summer Justin was deployed, though, that old definition of myself no longer mattered. Being with Justin is being at home. I couldn’t be with Justin, but turning our shared home into a place that reminded me of him and gave me the stability I was missing.

Many in my situation moved back home, but that wasn’t for me. It was a good experience to spend seven months in a totally new environment. I learned to be independent. Justin and I improved our communication skills while juggling time zones and work schedules which in turn strengthened our relationship.

When he leaves the Navy, things will return to normal. There won’t be jobs or mortgages holding us back. No threat of court martial looms should we choose to pick up and move wherever, whenever.

That future time in my life feels so open, and we spend many lovely hours talking about the possibilities.

“Should we do the Peace Corps?”

“Yes! Should I go to grad school in Manhattan?”

“Of course! Should I try to calculate how long we could live on our savings in an apartment in Mexico City or Paris?”

“Sure, I’ll help. Have you thought about the Appalachian Trail?”

The future holds everything and anything, but right now that’s not what I want.

Right now, I love every day that I come home from work, and he is waiting for me on the couch, legs propped on our coffee table, thumbing through the pages of another book on his reading list. I relish my to-do lists of household chores or schedules or anything that smacks of normalcy. I want to sleep in on Saturdays and play trivia at the bar down the street on Tuesdays. Right now, world travel can wait, because I like being home.

But when I know we’ll no longer be separated for months at a time, when we do take off and go, I’ll have no trouble leaving the candles and catalogues behind.

At nightfall, my friend and I climb into a motorboat with a group of Sicilians we’ve just met. We have been traveling the coast of Italy for nearly a month and now, having reached the Aeolian Islands, we are heading to Volcano, a volcanic island made entirely of black sand.

“Look,” one of the Sicilians says as we start away from shore, spreading out his arms towards the pebble beach. “Don’t we have the most beautiful beaches you’ve ever seen?”

“I’ve seen better,” I shrug. I am twenty years old.

It’s been just about three years since I left the San Francisco area, and I have spent those years trying to move as far away from home as possible. So why, as I ride out into the night, do I close my eyes to the shore before me, and return to the one I left behind?

“This all could have been lost to condos,” my father says, his voice hoarse. He takes out his Swiss Army knife and cuts a chunk off a block of cheddar, hands it to me. The harsh Point Reyes autumn wind whips sand around us. We’ve just walked four miles along the stark coast to this estuary at beach’s end. My feet are tired, hair knotted with salt and wind. My dad talks – once again – about the US congressman who fought plans to develop the area in the 1960s.

What is this that has been saved? Just north of San Francisco on the western tip of the affluent Marin County sits this rare, protected world, a peninsula of steep cliffs, wildflower dotted meadows, and narrow coves swallowed by an unyielding riptide. This is where I spent the weekends of my childhood.

As I bite into the slice of cheese, what we came for begins: Sea lions coming to feed. They first peak up their heads, then their bodies out of the water. Soon, there are dozens, then hundreds of them barking and flopping, caking their wet bodies with sand.

I am as insignificant to the sea lions as the tiny boats on the edge of the ocean. On a peninsula that has been traveling north for millions of years, my life is no more notable than the sand crabs burrowing around our feet.

I am thirteen years old. It’s been two months since my parents split up, and this is the first time in those two months that the dragging in my chest has ceased.

My father hands me a slice of heavily salted tomato.

“Pretty damn good,” he says, smiling. I stuff it into my mouth.

I nod, the juice running down my chin. One of the sea lions barks before it slips back into the water. It is the best tomato I have ever tasted, and the sea lions, slipping back into the still estuary, are the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen.

At sixteen, I bring my first love here where we spend the afternoon wrapped in a Mexican blanket. My father and I returned regularly, the stretches of time between are visits growing longer as I grew older and finally he moved away.

I have often wondered why certain places set anchor in us. Is it the power of family and first love that keeps Point Reyes so alive for me.

Photo by Alan Vernon

Or is it the unusual beauty of Point Reyes that shaped these moments, setting them down into my memory for good? Or?

“Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels he belongs,” says Somerset Maugham

I thought I’d find that place on the other side of the world, but it has taken much traveling, many beaches, more introductions and partings to realize this. All I want to do now is sit on that dune and eat a chunk of cheddar while I watch the sea lions crawl onto the estuary, their barks filling the air.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

- Leigh Shulman and Candice Walsh. Feature photo by Let’s Eat.

1. Here’s a sink dressed up in pastel colors and checkerboard print found in a chalet in Alsace. Photo by socaloca

2.Part of me wants to clean up the muck splattered all over, but mostly, I’m taken in by the collision of color. Photo by Philo Nordlund.

3. A decrepit sink in an abandoned house on the eastern plains of Colorado. Photo by vjstark.

4. This sink comes from an exhibit not-surprisingly titled “Everything But the Kitchen Sink” at the Fine Arts Center of Kershaw County, South Carolina. The original sink-art by Keith Tolen is called Sink-e-delic. The photographer calls his sink photo Testing Twittergram. Photo by raggedj.

5. Sink graffiti, from Paris. The photographer explains how you find them all over the city in different colors. Photo by reel aesthete.

6. You never know what you’ll pass along the way. This sink looks like it somehow belongs all shiny, clean and among the weeds. Photo by DPhotoOP.

7.Flamingos in the sink. Of course there are. Photo by ricko.

8. Underneath the sink. The parts you rarely notice unless they stop working. Photo by jhhwild.

9. Every sink should have a window over it, so your eyes can drift to the outside world while you’re finishing those mundane chores. The photographer calls the photo “Canning Day,” but it’s the striking blue scene outside the window you notice first. That and the evil strawberry on the wall. Photo by MizMagee.

10. This sink took part in the 2008 Museum of Modern Art exhibit titled “Home Delivery.” Want to see more from this exhibit? Photo by Scott Norsworthy.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

These photographs attempt to take the mundane, boring kitchen sink and turn it into something different. Do they succeed? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

Photos by Sejal Saraiya

Beads of sweat develop on his forehead as he smears a generous lump of fresh green chutney onto two slices of bread. It is a busy day for him, Mondays usually are. Young boys huddle around his tiny wooden booth in their school uniforms—pants folded to keep the sand off their clothes–so that their parents don’t find out about their furtive excursion to the beach. I realize it’s going to take a while before I can place my order.

He pulls the grubby napkin resting across his shoulder and wipes off the sweat. Then, pushing it back to where it belongs, he begins to slice tomatoes, onions, potatoes and finally cucumbers, swiftly but nimbly, and tosses them onto the bread with such precision that every bite of the sandwich has a bit of each vegetable.

It is nearly evening, but the heat is piercing. The tide is low. Grey clouds traverse slowly from the Arabian Sea. The street children have seized this scorching hour to play cricket. Their tan skins burn to chocolate brown but they play passionately because the boys from Young Guns Soccer League will invade their space in the evening for their daily, after-college, beach soccer practice.

I sit on the wooden bench by his stall and dig my toes into the cool damp sand. The paint is wearing off, and green specks stick onto my moist palm. The inevitable smell of camels reminds me of my early childhood, of days when my mother used to bring us here—my sister and I—for camel rides in the evenings. 10 rupees per ride. There are no camels on the beach anymore. Nor is anything offered for just 10 rupees.

A woman sits next to me on the bench and munches her sandwich greedily. Her son tugs at her saree impatiently. She’s probably South Indian because she talks swiftly, swallowing alphabets. She’s thin and dark-skinned, and has a garland of mogra (jasmine) in her oiled hair. The fusion of the two smells—the flowers and the oil—is repelling. Her son bursts into tears and she trashes her half-eaten sandwich exasperatedly [and shamelessly] onto the beach and lifts her son into her arms. They walk towards the sea swiftly.

A dog totters to the tomatoes and now-soggy bread lying on the sand and licks it, wagging its tail. The driver in a Lexus, parked on the road not too far from the beach, honks impatiently to remind the sandwich wallah that ‘madam’—the wife of the owner of the Lexus—doesn’t have all day, and that he should hurry up.

The clouds are overhead, and it’s starting to cool. Two women in a traditional salwar kameez and white Nike sports shoes—quite obviously here for their evening brisk walk—walk past me, hardly briskly, quite tired, talking loudly, their buttocks jutting out. I can’t help but chuckle. Not too far away, the South Indian woman enters the sea in her saree. I’m nervous for her, her saree could come loose against the force of the water, but I notice that she’s not the only one. There are many tourists from other, non coastal parts of India, in sarees swimming in the sea.

The crowd around the sandwich wallah finally subsides. I place my order. “Ek Veg cheese grilled sandwich. I hate potatoes and onions in my sandwich and he must know that. “Bina alu aur kaanda…” I continue, but he has already started making the sandwich. The clouds are approaching and I have an hour’s jog on the beach before I get home to get ready for my cousin’s wedding. Not too far away, the coconut vendor is shaving off the top of coconuts dexterously. I’m thirsty. I hand over a twenty rupee note to the sandwich wallah and accept my grilled sandwich—packed in yesterday’s newspaper. I hold it tight as I walk to the coconut vendor. “Ek Nariyal paani.”

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Want to realize your dream of becoming a successful travel writer? Check out MatadorU to learn more about Matador’s own online travel writing program.

I recently wrote an article for my blog asking why it’s so difficult to find balance and happiness in life. That post was born out of my own frustrations trying to juggle all the disparate elements of my own existence. Too often, I feel like I’m running to catch up, and too rarely am I able to relax and reflect.

“How do others manage?” I wondered, and thus, the inspiration for this photo essay was born. I immediately began contacting other families and parents I know through Twitter. Some are traveling full time. Others are well respected writers. Others are business entrepreneurs, chefs and teachers.

I’ll admit, I half expected to hear pithy, cliche aphorisms about how you too can manage your life if only you follow these clear simple instructions. What I found instead was true, solid insight and advice that brings perspective and perhaps the acceptance we need to find order in our chaotic schedules. Not just for parents, but for anyone seeking harmony between the many parts of our lives.

1. The Vogels — @familyonbikes — can be seen stopping on the Panamerican Highway in southern Colombia. Nancy and John gave up their jobs teaching to travel the length of the Americas by bike while homeschooling their two boys. You can read more about their travels at their website Family On Bikes.

THEIR TIP FOR BALANCE: When you live a simplified life on the road, balance comes naturally. We wake up. We pack the bikes. We ride. We eat. We sleep.

2. Christopher Elliott — @elliottdotorg — is National Geographic Traveler magazine’s reader advocate and writes the syndicated column The Travel Troubleshooter.

HIS THOUGHTS ON BALANCE: Balance? What’s that? In an always-on world with its 24/7 news cycle, I’ll settle for staying afloat.

But if you want to try to find balance — not saying you will, but you can try — you have to block off the time and announce your plans to the entire family: “We’re going to SeaWorld on Saturday! We’ll ride one of those pink Flamingo boats out on the lake!”

Then, if something comes up and you try to back out, they’ll put you on a guilt trip that makes the terrifying Kraken rollercoaster on the far side of the park seem like Disneyworld’s It’s A Small World.

Word to the wise: Don’t disappoint a two-year-old. Or her brothers. Ah, balance.

3. Paul Sullivan — @paulosullivano — is a writer, author and photographer specializing in music, culture and travel. He lives in Berlin with his girlfriend and 20-month-old son. You can read more about Paul on his website. He is also a contributing editor and Matador Network’s editor-at-large.

PAUL’S TIP FOR BALANCE: Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

4. Julie Schwietert — @collazoprojects — blogs about parenthood at www.9mos.wordpress.com and about the writing life at www.cuadernoinedito.wordpress.com. She’s a new mom and the managing editor of Matador. Here she is at the airport. Mom, kid, dog and luggage. What more do you need?

JULIE’S THOUGHTS ON BALANCE: Balance? Muah huah huah!

No, seriously. I’m pretty sure I’m never going to feel like I’ve achieved balance (there’s too much I want to do to fit into one life), so I try hard not to pursue balance as a goal.

I do that by not setting rigid rules for myself or my family. For example, I just read about someone who has a rule about turning off the computer at 8 PM. That’s nice, and I’m glad it works for them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it works for me (especially because I work with people in different time zones) or that I have to adopt that as a rule in my own life. I also quit trying to impose impossible expectations upon myself. I just do the best I can.

Oh, and one more thing: I have an extraordinary husband who handles all the dirty details of life: eating, cleaning, laundry, and the like. That’s the real secret!

5. Jenna Park — @whimsyandspice — has been working as an art director and designer for over 13 years. She and her husband Mark run a Brooklyn confectionary called Whimsy & Spice that was founded in 2008. You can catch them daily on their blog, sweet fine day, which chronicles culinary, family and New York City life.

Read on to the next photo for Jenna and Mark’s ideas on how to maintain balance in family life.

6. Mark Sopchak — the other half of Whimsy & Spice –has been working as a pastry chef in the NYC restaurant industry for over 12 years.

HOW JENNA AND MARK KEEP THEIR BALANCE: How do we find balance between our working life and family life?

After nearly 6 years as working parents, first with a freelance business and jobs, and now with our own confectionary business added to the mix, we are still trying to figure it out. 1 kid became 2, and with each age comes its own challenges and needs. You feel like you figured out how to handle the 2s, but then they turn 3 and turn your world upside down, and so on.

I think the key for us has always been to just go with the flow and take each day’s challenges one by one. As business owners, there are no boundaries between home and work life – one often flows into the other at all hours of the day, so we’ve stopped fighting it and let our lives become what it is.

Some days have better balance than others, but we always make time to drop and pick up the kids from school, eat dinner together as a family and spend some quality time with the kids a good few hours each day.

7. Lea Woodward — @leawoodward — lives a location independent life and founded the Location Independent Network to help others manage successful careers while traveling. This photo shows her working hard on her balcony in Dubai. She just left Dubai to spend a few months in Thailand.

All the while, Lea continues running her online businesses with her husband Jonathan. She has just launched a new site with parents specifically in mind, www.LocationIndependentParents.com.

8. Even with her busy travel and work schedule, Lea makes time to play with her daughter.

LEA’S TIP FOR FINDING BALANCE: Finding balance is an interesting one.I’ve found recently that it just requires making the decision to balance whatever is out of balance and then doing it…and then seeing what the consequences are and living with them. Not always easy but sometimes necessary.

9. Debbie Dubrow — @deliciousbaby — created and runs Delicious Baby, a website dedicated to making travel with kids fun. If that wasn’t enough, Debbie is also one of those responsible for Passports With Purpose, a raffle fund-raiser currently working toward building a school in Cambodia, complete with clean water, vegetable garden and a school nurse.

In this photo, she enjoys family time with her kids at a Seattle Storm game..

DEBBIE’S ADVICE FOR CREATING BALANCE: I don’t know any parent who has an easy time balancing the different areas of their life. Instead I try to focus on making sure that I spend the bulk of my time doing things that I either truly enjoy or that contribute to my goals.

When one area starts to take over too much, I sit down with my schedule and figure out how to rearrange things and where to cut back.

10. Jamie Pearson — @travelsavvymom — was in Belgium in a hotel dining room when her then 3-year-old daughter threw up. In the mortifying moments that followed, she caught the vomit in her cupped hand, called to the waiter for help, and was (eventually) handed a single paper napkin.

Most parents can relate to such a situation, and if they can’t, they will eventually. Thus the idea for her website Travel Savvy Mom hatched, and she went about creating a website where parents can find kid-and-family friendly hotels worldwide.

JAMIE’S WORDS OF ADVICE: When I was growing up my mother often told me that I could be anything and everything I wanted, just not all at the same time. This is the best advice I ever got.

In addition, she has three points for all traveling parents: 1) Never leave home without peanut butter, 2) No child is too big for a stroller, and 3) Bring plenty of new toys—$50 for three pounds of plastic crap will seem like the deal of the century at 3am in a London hotel.

11. Allison Nazarian — @AllisonNazarian — is a well-known writer, author (OneMinuteCopywriter.com) and consultant who lives in Boca Raton, Florida, with her son, daughter and Black Lab. Read Allison’s truth at www.AllisonNazarian.com.

WHAT ALLISON SAYS ABOUT FINDING BALANCE: I first became a Mom 12 years ago this month. I was and still am what you might call a Control-Freak-Type-A-OverAchiever (I’m in Recovery). I thrive on order and organization and things that are smooth and predictable and controllable. So when my first child was born, you can only imagine my utter inability to make heads or tails of my life. I was overwhelmed and definitely not in control. I was a mess!

I went on to spend years judging myself and my mothering abilities. I was never good enough. Or I worked too much. Or I was not involved in school enough. Or I should have made more nutritious dinners and snacks. Or I should have spent more/less time helping with homework. Or I made a mistake in “forcing” one or the other to do a project themselves instead of taking the easier route and doing it for them (happens all the time … Parents, you know who you are!).

Until, finally, somehow, I realized I was already good enough. I just stopped the constant attack. I was already everything they needed. Even though I make mistakes or curse in front of them or get fast food more than I should or tell them they are on their own with the math homework, I am a great Mom. Just this year, I became a single Mom. My kids’ Dad and I are great friends and great parents together. Being married does not a great parent make, and I resisted my natural urge all year long to feel any guilt or beat myself up over the divorce. We are still a family and always will be. And in the end, the constant quest for balance is more the same than different.

So I am human and messy and imperfect. And I bet you are, too. Yet I am an awesome Mom. And I bet you are, too.

12. Leigh Shulman (that’s me!) – @thefutureisred — spent the last three years traveling with my husband and daughter. In this photo, we went horseback riding in Cafayate, Argentina. It was a five hour ride, and Lila chatted happily away the entire time. You can read more about our travels on my blog The Future Is Red.

MY TIP FOR ACHIEVING BALANCE: I’ve come to the realization that no matter what, there will always be something more, something else, something different. Worry doesn’t help. It only makes you less likely to enjoy the moment.

Aside from that, the best advice I ever got about parenting also relates well to finding balance and in many ways ties in many of the ideas and thoughts of these other parents. Try something. If it doesn’t work, try something else.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Emma Lundmark shows off some tunnbröd dough.

My first encounter with Tunnbröd (thin bread) came in the form of local street grub I’d quickly grabbed after a day at Vasamuseet a couple years ago. The concoction I’d ordered – soft thin bread rolled up funnel-style and filled with sausage, mashed potatoes, onions, mustard, lettuce, and other dubious condiments – was called Tunnbrödsrulle.

Integral to most meals in Sweden, I would later be introduced to varied and crispier versions of Tunnbröd. Thin bread topped with cheap caviar squeezed from a tube and cucumber slices adorn tables across the country. Crispy thin bread heavily smeared with butter regularly accompanies lunch and dinner. Crushed tunnbröd is eaten with sour milk and lingonberry jam cereal-style in a fashion called bryta (also known to Northerners as smolanedi).

Tunnbröd also plays supporting role to Surströmming (fermented Baltic herring), of which I have firsthand experience sampling.

While spending last summer up in Norrbotten (Northern Sweden), we’d convened at the local neighborhood joint for lunch – a small convenience store/pub/restaurant/bakery – all rolled into one in the small village of Klöverträsk; population – 260.

The only item on the menu that day – a pasta and meatballs with brown sauce dish – also happened to be the lunch special.

Young Emma Lundmark serves us our meal.

“You know Jonny makes his own tunnbröd,” someone chimes in just as we dig into baskets of freshly baked crispy bread.

I immediately set up a date with Emma, Jonny’s oldest daughter. She agreed to take me the very next morning behind the scenes of their bakery – Klöverträsk Bröd – an icon in the village for the last 40+ years.

1. Located in the village of Klöverträsk, The Lundmarks run their small one room bakery right next to the equally small convenience store where they sell groceries and toiletries. Their attached pub/restaurant is just a door away behind the store.

2. “It’s fun to work with your hands,” shares Emma as she kneads and prepares dough early in the morning. Each batch makes roughly 40 kg of tunnbröd so two batches are made per day.

3.A grooved roll pin is used to aerate the dough and to give it its texture look.

4.The bread is passed multiple times through a “kavelmaskin” – a machine that is used to stretch out the dough into a near paper-thin layer.

5.Once the dough has been stretched to the right weight, it is sliced into manageable pieces for baking.

6.The sliced up dough is then flash-baked for 20-25 seconds.

7.The baked crispy bread is cut into stackable pieces while still hot, and piled into boxes to continue their cooling down process.

8.Each box is weighed to make sure they meet the 400g (800g for larger boxes).

9.Simple clear cellophane tape is applied to seal the boxes up.

10.The freshly baked tunnbröd is ready to be delivered to local stores, including the Lundmarks’ own convenience store.

11.Another Lundmark specialty is cardamom-infused biscuits called Bettans Biscuits.

12.It takes about 20 minutes to mix and prepare each batch of dough.

13.The dough is left to rise for 45 minutes before baking for another 45 minutes.

14.Once the bread cools down and edges are cut away, they’re left to dry out for about two days. After that, they are put in a cutting machine to continue making smaller pieces which are baked one more time for close to two hours to give them their signature crispy taste.

15.Once ready, the biscuits are bagged and ready for sale. The Lundmarks also sell breadcrumbs accumulated from the baking process so that these cardamom-flavored breadcrumbs can be used for other baking purposes.

16.The finished products end up in the backyard pub and restaurant for guests.

17.The boxes and bags of thin bread and biscuits also end up in their convenience storefront for local customers to buy. The store is literally a door away that leads from the bakery.

18.Twice a month, the Lundmarks deliver tunnbröd and cardamom biscuits to roughly 60 local stores and supermarkets all across Swedish Lapland and in neighboring towns of Luleå, Piteå, Älvsbyn, and Boden.

More on Klöverträsk Bröd (Bread)

For more than 40 years, Klöverträsk Bröd has remained a family-owned business, providing fat free, sugar free, and milk free tunnbröd. The bakery was purchased roughly five years ago by The Lundmarks – Jonny, Monica, and their five children – from previous owner Robert Öhman who, after 18 years of running the business, was ready to move on.

In addition to Klöverträsk Bröd, the Lundmarks also purchased a 20+ year old recipe for old fashioned cardamom biscuits called Bettans Biscuits, which originated from a little village called Niemisel.

Since both purchases, Jonny has expanded the bakery’s offerings to include the following four products:

• Bettans Biscuits
• Bettans Breadcrumbs which can be used for baking
• Smaller 400g boxes of Klöverträsk tunnbröd
• 650g boxes of regular breadcrumbs

22 year old Emma continues to tend the bakery, shop, and restaurant alongside her parents.

Contact Information

Klöverträsk Bröd
Klöverträsk bya väg 21
975 91 Luleå
Phone: (46) 0920-85200
E-mail: jmltrading@telia.com

It was no surprise when we did a search for the word “Life” on Flickr we found ourselves buried deep in a mass of imagery. As we sorted through the photos, trying to choose only 10-15 images to represent the range in the “meaning of life,” we began realizing our goal was impossible.

We found ourselves automatically dividing our thoughts into categories. Some of people. Some of lifestyle choices. Others of non-human life. Still life. Biodiversity of life. Life and death. On and on.

Finally, we had to make choices. In many ways, it felt random. Why the photo of a man wearing a LIFE t-shirt over the pro-life woman with tape over her mouth and the word “life” written on it? Why the statue outside of Columbia University over a still life painting with a pewter frog?

But that’s how it is, you cannot do and experience the entire world and all it has to offer. You can only do your best at the moment with the information you have. You can only exist, appreciate, rail against, love or hate what you have. The crux is in making a choice.

That, right there, is life.

-Leigh Shulman and Candice Walsh

1. An exhibit in Chicago’s Field Museum, showing the diversity of life with the addition of a little girl. Variety is key. Photo by Brian Finifter.

2. The Dalai Lama’s Instructions for Life, organized in an impressive tree-chart. Just about everything you’ll ever need to know. Photo by pshutterbug.

3. Apartment Life, even at home things get upside down. Find balance. Photo by shoothead.

4. She Lives in Nurnberg, a portrait of waiting. This leaning figure with laced fingers is in no rush. Photo by egomaniackid.

5. Life Force, taken at Columbia University. Sometimes you just need to look at things from a different perspective. Photo by llahbocaj.

6. Thug for Life, life-sized graffiti. Art comes in all forms, you just have to look for it. Photo by silverfox09.

7.Colour Your Life, crosswalk art. Why not add some colour? Photo by zigazou76.

8. Way of Life. Stay true to your beliefs, discard the ones that don’t fit. Photo by Paraschiv Alexandru.

9. Soho Life, a Corner Shop Chorus Line. The caption says it all: “This lot had just been singing some kind of show tune, inside this small shop. I had my camera poised & as soon as they spotted me we had a bit of a showbiz moment, it’s a Soho thing.” Dare to be bold. Photo by fast eddie 42.

10. Fill Your Life With Croutons, graffiti from Melbourne. Because why the hell not? Instincts matter. Photo by s2art.

11. Life. I didn’t choose this image for the final cut the first time around, but it had to be included. Sit. Close eyes. Smile. Enjoy. Repeat. Photo by rbackowski.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Do these photos represent Life to you? How so or how not? Try your own Flickr search, give us the links to photos you would have chosen to include in this photo essay.

The author’s wife, Yvonne, enjoying her childhood

I always love hearing my wife’s stories about childhood life in East Germany. Yvonne was 10 years old when she left for the West before the wall came down (yes, it was possible to leave — just very difficult).

Modern Schneeberg, where Yvonne grew up

I was finally able to visualize her stories on a trip to Germany in 2007. The DDR museum in Dresden is like stepping into a time machine — separate and fully furnished rooms of typical houses and offices rekindled strong memories for Yvonne and provided me with a glimpse into the past. (Another entertaining look back is the film Goodbye Lenin!)

After reading another traveler’s account of his brief visit to East Berlin in 1987, I thought I’d start peppering Yvonne with more questions about what it was like to grow up in the East. The below anecdotes are strictly from her memory, the way she remembered things. I didn’t want to mess that up with any research.

Childhood life in East Germany in the 80s

1. There were no bananas. You could only get them once or twice a year, and you’d only be notified of their availability by word of mouth. So you’d have to rush to the veggie store (not a veggie store as we know it — just cabbages, potatoes…anything grown locally) and stand in line to get your one banana per person in your household.

The ubiquitous Trabant (Kombi model)

To stretch the rations, Yvonne’s mum would quarter the banana, slice it thinly and serve it on bread to her and her sister.

2. You couldn’t buy strawberries from a store. If you wanted them you had to go and work in the fields picking them for hours. You were allowed to buy a certain portion of the ones you picked.

Yvonne remembers her mum telling her, “Don’t worry about picking, just eat as many as you can!”

3. Luxury items were priced way out of proportion to people’s salaries. A black and white TV might cost 10 times a person’s monthly salary; a 200g bag of coffee would cost around $20.

4. If you wanted to buy a car — most likely the ubiquitous Trabant — you had to wait years. Like, 10-12 years. So people who turned 16 (although you had to be 18 to drive) would put their orders in to get their mitts on a car when they were in their late 20s.

5. Yvonne remembers visiting the Baltic Sea twice in her childhood for vacation. They didn’t have much choice of where they could go. Holiday homes were usually linked and subsidized through work and you could obtain use of them once in a while.

6. You could only watch one of a few state channels, but radio waves know no walls (well, except maybe lead ones), so those close to the border were able to pick up signals from the West.

Luckily, Yvonne’s family was able to, so they had some access to the West’s news. Obviously, this was all very hush hush.

7. Every child was part of the Pioneers: Grades 1-4 were Blue Pioneers, 5-7 were Red Pioneers, and grades 8-10 graduated to the Free German Youth (FDJ).

When you first arrived to school, all the students would stand at attention and salute the teacher.

The teacher would say, “Be prepared!”, and the students would reply, “Always prepared!” before giving the salute, and then the day began.

Every 7 October, Yvonne — along with all the other Pioneers — would join in the parade commemorating the birth of the GDR. They dressed up in their Pioneer outfits, waved flags and flowers, and cheered.

Yvonne taking a bath in the sink.

8. Yvonne’s home had no bathtub or shower, only a sink and a toilet. She was fortunate enough to have a grandma with a bath, so once a week they would make their way there. Hot water didn’t just flow out of the taps though.

The water was heated by charcoal stove. A big water tank sat next to the tub with a little stove underneath where charcoal had to be shoveled in. The charcoal was delivered a few times per year by a big truck. They would leave a big pile of it and the residents had to shovel their portion of the coal into their allotted space in the basement.

Even at her own house without tub or shower, they needed to heat the water this way. They lived on the fifth floor, so Yvonne remembers having to walk all the way down to the basement with a couple of buckets and back up with them topped full of charcoal.

The fonder memories

It wasn’t all trying though. Everyone had a job, school lunches were free, after-school care was free, people were generally happy, necessities were extremely cheap, and there was more community spirit than there is nowadays. In those times, there were no Joneses to keep up with.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

For a beautiful photo essay on modern Berlin through an ex-pat’s lens, check out Paul Sullivan’s Berlin 20/20: A Photo Tour of a Reunited City.

To find out how Berliners are going to celebrate this November 9, check out Two Ways to Celebrate the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Do you have any of your own stories to tell? Share with us below!

On the beach at St Alban’s / Photo by Candice Walsh

Long Path Road is dead.

Dad and I sit on the front deck of our sandy bungalow, 11 p.m., him smoking and me trying to adjust to darkness without streetlights.

“Why on earth would anyone build a cabin when you already live in the middle of nowhere?” he says, taking a haul on his cigarette.

I didn’t know Dad had a sense of humor until two years ago, when my relatives and I gathered in my Uncle’s shed, eating homemade beef-jerky, listening to fiddle music, and drinking Black Horse ale.

Boiling Tea / Photo by Candice Walsh

Dad picked up an old rope tied to a snowmobile and started using it as a skipping rope. Later, when my Aunts and I squatted in the grass to relieve ourselves, I looked up at the glittery darkness and wondered when I had been created equal to my family.

“Don’t let that dog lick your arse!” my Aunts screeched as I toppled over.

But there are no age boundaries, no social constructs here. Among these hills and inside the bay, you’re forced to create bonds. I ride my bike around town and people holler, “HELLO, CANDICE!” I completely forget who they are.

The town is overgrown with alders. My path to the old Catholic school has disappeared. My friends and I used to chug beers on that path before we all graduated high school and moved away.

This year, 28 new homes have been built, and plans are set for a multimillion-dollar government building. The marsh across from our house is being drained to facilitate a new road, and a cul-de-sac for more houses. Who in their right minds would build a house here, six hours from the nearest city, a million years away from good healthcare? Travelling halfway across Canada is more bearable than a trip home.

The next evening I run into an old classmate, Kyle. Not yet graduated from University, he and his brother have bought a modern two-storey house among the trees for less than $40,000. They have invested in a tourism business, taking wanderers around the bay for overnight camping trips, windsurfing lessons, and explorations of the many untouched beaches and coves. Around the wind-beaten, freezing coast of southern Newfoundland, Kyle has perfected surfing.

Surprisingly, the pub is filled with people in their twenties and early thirties. A cluster of older people stare at me as I approach the bar for a drink. “Judging by your red hair, you must be a Walsh,” says one man, leaning forward, and his hands gripping his beer.

One can only remain without an identity for so long.

When I awake on my last day in St. Alban’s, I spy Dad’s rucksack sitting by the front door. He’s in the kitchen brewing tea, and he plants a bottle of homemade bakeapple jam on the table for me. The room smells like evergreen trees and wood smoke, and I’m reminded of the time we spent the afternoon hiking through Dad’s trail, pausing to boil tea over a fire in the snow. The best tea I ever had.

Suddenly the city is deader than this town.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION: Want to realize your dream of becoming a successful travel writer? Check out Matador U to learn more about Matador’s own online travel writing program.

Oakland. City of Dreams. Photo by anarchosyn

I glare into red brake lights and sigh. Rubberneckers stare across the center divide at the solemn funeral procession.

Six days ago, in the middle of a spring afternoon in East Oakland, a wanted parolee resisting arrest opened fire on police, killing four cops. It’s being called the worst day in Oakland history, not an easily earned title in a city infamous for sideshows, motorcycle clubs and gangster rap.

The entire Oakland police force has been given the day off to attend the funeral, and the procession is shutting down the four eastbound lanes of 580.

Photo by anarchosyn

“Come on, people.” I inch along, annoyed as I stare at the rooftops and asthmatic-looking palm trees peeking over the freeway’s edge, determined not to gawk.

It’s easy to grow hardened in Oakland. Violence, crime and corruption seep into the everyday, a sort of infection that’s gotten into the blood of the place.

Every year you watch the number of homicides creep towards, and often above, 100; every year, you know a couple more people who’ve been robbed, assaulted, held at gunpoint.

I round a bend in the road. Now I slow, stop, stare. On one side, ceaselessly coming towards me, is a single-file stretch of motorcycles, cop cars and black-windowed vehicles. I realize I can’t see the end of it; it arches an overpass, keeps coming, a steady passing of grief.

On the other side of the divide, it looks something like that REM video. Cars have pulled over onto either shoulder, their drivers stepped out, standing either staring or with heads bowed. No one speaks. The rumbling sound of the passing procession is all I can hear.

Photo by madpai

Dust-covered day laborers have parked their pick-up truck next to a bluetoothed, Escalade-driving businessman. Tattooed arms hang out of a flat-black old Pontiac, while dread-locked hyphy kids stare from atop gleaming rims. They all wear similar looks, not of shock, but of sadness, a deep-down, well-buried pain.

It’s heartbreaking to love a city like Oakland, but looking at all these faces, I realize why I do. It’s the spirit of the place, diverse and alive and like home, that keeps me here, fiercely believing in the city’s goodness, its potential to be more.

While no one in city government has made any public statements about the incident (aside from stock comments from the mayor), and while marginalized segments of the community have been calling the gunman a revolutionary hero, the true Oakland is here, silent and grieving together on the interstate.

Driving across the long, barren stretches of highway through the Mojave Desert, I get this bittersweet feeling of coming home after a long time of being away. I see the light rising up—the hellish illuminations of Las Vegas—a city cradled by mountains on all sides; it looks like a smoldering fire pit, or the mouth of a volcano ready to blow itself wide open.

As I’ve traveled outside of my hometown, I’ve encountered numerous people who find it hard to believe that a man could actually hail from Las Vegas. More than once I’ve been asked if I live in a casino. No, no. There are even houses and apartments and trailer parks.

“Wow,” they will say, “must be a great place to live,” and I’m compelled to laugh in their faces. It may be okay for a tourist on holiday, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a glamorized cesspit, and if you don’t lose your ass gambling, then the dry desert heat will get it.

Photo by lostamerica

There are two types of gamblers in Las Vegas: those that gamble because they think they can beat the house, and those that gamble for sport, because to them gambling is everything and the money means nothing. If they won Megabucks they would be back in the casino the next day to start giving it back in installments.

I’ve seen my grandfather throw his social security money away every month for the last decade of his life. When he died his wife discovered winning tickets for over twenty grand stashed away in his dresser. She never saw a dime of it because in theory the money had never changed hands.

Photo by gsgeorge

The casinos seem to draw any culture and vitality from the rest of the city. There have been a few attempts at creating an art district but setting up art galleries in dangerous areas only invites despicable hipsters in, and it doesn’t clean up the trash. It only creates more.

Most of the local poets and writers hang around the bars and cafés near the university, and because of the lack of any scene, it’s easy to sift through the bullshitters, the pretentious, the sycophants, the pseudo-intellectuals, and so on. It’s cool to be an artist in San Francisco, but if you’re an artist in Las Vegas it’s usually because you want to be.

Photo by geoperdis

There are plenty of good bars by the university, where it’s easy to avoid any insufferable tourist crowds—obnoxious frat boys and Barbie look-alikes are scarce, because they like to be a part of the show, and that takes place on The Strip. As for the downtown scene, it is swarming with hipsters, and like The Strip it is overcrowded and overpriced.

I’ve found my local dens, and that’s where I spend my nights when I’m back home. I don’t know what keeps dragging me back to the neon landfill -usually women, unfinished romances, that sort of thing. It’s never long before I’m back sitting at the bar of one of my old haunts, considering another way out.

When the first hurricane hit Florida, I lay in bed. The day was dark as night. Dark inside, too, since the power had gone out. By noon the winds had come in full fury, east to west, no swirling, and no gusts like normal storms, just a sheer wall of sound, trees bent, not billowing.

Otherwise it was eerily quiet, for there is little electrical activity during hurricanes, unlike the usual cataclysmic thunderstorms that erupt every afternoon. Plant City is far enough inland, maybe 40 miles from the Gulf Coast and even farther from the Atlantic, so the danger was not great.

I did jump onto the floor a few times, crouched between bed and dresser as the huge oak tree curled over my bedroom screamed with broken limbs. After a while I got used to the falling branches; the roof was strong enough to withstand a few thumps.

Photo by ASurroca

I just lay in bed all day, into late evening, the window cracked to better hear the rushing torrents, and let in cooler air.

The power stayed out for two weeks, much longer for some. There was one local restaurant/bar that had a generator, so they reopened the night after the storm. With the summer heat returning and most businesses and schools closed, the only reasonable thing to do was buy a newspaper and head to the bar when they opened at 11 in the morning, driving on twig and leaf littered roads, through intersections left chaotic by deadened traffic lights.

Once at the bar I would order icy mugs of beer – only light domestics available – and pass the time, maybe stare at the TV, or into the void, or gnaw on fried cheese.

By the next Friday another hurricane was bearing down. The bar was sparsely filled now, only the dedicated flies were out, while most stayed at home, lest an early slap of wind knock a tree onto their car, or send a projectile right through their God-fearing face – and to prepare, of course, lighting candles, taping windows, filling bathtubs with emergency water.

Hurricanes came every weekend that August, and with each of Mother Nature’s wolf cries the populace grew more at ease, the numbers at the bar on the eve of storms increased, and the conversation about the nearing storm had the tone of chatting about the local football team. There might even be a bit of an argument, “I think it’s cutting south,” “No, I think it’s going to hook up the coast.”

Photo by Otaku

August ended. The power came back on. Lawns were raked clean.

And nothing changed. Nothing ever changes in Plant City. I left four years ago, after doing 24 years’ time, and when I visit now and then it’s exactly the same. The locals swear that change is constant and it seems to even sadden some, though most are proud of their growth. A new hardware store, a new chain restaurant, a new neighborhood where an orange grove used to be.

In the bars, the waitresses had children at fifteen, the fathers gone from memory by kindergarten. Aging beauty queens sit at round tables, faces frozen, beside their fawning royal court and their fattened quarterbacks and plastic babies. They look the same as in junior high, just a bit softer, smaller, tired, scared. All with eyes as unaware as a doll’s. All laughing on schedule like jack-in-the-boxes. They don’t realize they are barely even the approximation of aristocrats.

At the bar counter the patrons mumble in your ear about the niggers and spics that plague them, as they give you that knowing look, a little grin, because it’s something to bond over: fear and ignorance. It’s a tradition.

Snow and ice clung to the dock as whitecaps churned atop a colorless harbor. ‘I hope I never have to live in this God forsaken place,’ thought my mother in the blustery, frigid January of 1960. ‘The boondocks, the middle of nowhere…’

This fearful plea perhaps caught the gently ironic attention of The Man Upstairs, and my folks moved to Westport Point, MA in 1961. The city girl from bustling Ft. Lauderdale found herself living in a massive converted barn, 15 “country miles” from Central Village, sledding Gamble’s Hill on the winter snow, leaping from Elephant Rock under the summer sun at the beach club.

The old cow paths, Sodom Road and Cornell Road, wind and weave forever across the hilly terrain, carving an obscure kind of geography into the cornfields, cow pastures, and acres and acres of woodlands rich in Norway maple, red oak, and white birch, such that it is not uncommon to hear a landowner remark, “I’m not for certain where my property ends, but…”

Photo by PhillipC

Drift Road and River Road parallel the East and West branches of the Westport River, which divide the landscape into three long, wide fingers poking into Buzzard’s Bay.

Almost a hundred years ago the rumrunners would slide their boats past the Point of Rocks and utilize their local knowledge to navigate the broad marshes and hidden shallows of the West Branch and evade capture. The descendants of these bootleggers would turn the town into the Chop Shop Capital of the World.

But Westport’s citizens are essentially honest and industrious growers, harvesters, caretakers.

At the core of Westport’s evolution is a group of families that can trace their heritage back to the settling of the town, names like Gifford, Macomber, Manchester, and Tripp. The sons and daughters of these Swamp Yankees continue to take care of their own and honor their stubborn ancestry, like fixing the same sewing machine or hay baler twenty-seven times or like taking a grudge to the grave.

My folks slowly wove their way into the community. My mother directed the church choir for thirty-five years and served in the public school system, while my father’s commercial fishing ventures employed hundreds of sturdy Westport men.

Photo by PhillipC

So while the fixtures symbolize the town’s character – the ancient Bell Schoolhouse, the historic Acoaxet Chapel – it’s the characters who truly embody the town’s spirit, from Cukie, the local historian/storyteller whose memory ought to be a national treasure, to Fast Jack, a mildly eccentric veteran who runs a continuous yard sale from his front yard on Main Street that no one can shop because of the fierce goat he keeps there.

The farmers still predict the weather better than any meteorologist and the fishermen still congregate on Lees Wharf to discuss The Way Things Used To Be.

Of course Westport has grown and changed significantly over the last half-century, but it remains a place rich in resources, inhabited by resourceful people. The fertile soil supports vineyards now, in addition to the working farms. Kayak tours float awestruck visitors downriver in concert with local fishermen wielding clam rakes or picking green crab traps.

Photo by dougtone

The summer crowd rushes in from Boston and New York to frequent the Westport Lobster Co. for fresh scallops and the roadside produce stands for sweet corn. Months later will find Westport’s own retired to their barns, repairing equipment and mending gear.

As new housing developments continue to morph the town into a kind of rustic bedroom community, the traditional Westport lifestyle prevails, private but not secluded, slow but certainly never dull.

My mother laughs at her first recollection of my hometown. January here is no longer bitter or desolate, but peaceful. She enjoys the Concerts at the Point, the Harvest Festival, and Wildcat basketball games, as well as the fact that she can’t get through the market or the post office without encountering half-a-dozen friends.

And as she considers retirement now and her golden years, she’s overwhelmed by one particular sentiment: ‘I can’t imagine living anywhere else.’

Feature photo and photo above by Lola Akinmade.

Jolting out of bed at the sound of my name, I begrudgingly rush over to my parents’ room for daily morning prayers. Names are yelled out in chronological order and being the oldest means I always lose a few seconds of sleep.

I love watching the cap-full of Dettol – a common antiseptic – expand into an amoebic white cloud as I pour it into a bucket of tepid water. Its residual smell lets my mom know we’ve properly showered. I slip into my little blue and white striped uniform with blue flaps for collars. We can guess which schools neighborhood kids attend based on colors, stripes, or checkered pattern of their uniforms.

The smell of curry, thyme, and white pepper wafting from the kitchen means our house help is almost done with the classic Nigerian omelette. Tomatoes, onions, and a pinch of salt rounds it out. It is usually eaten with fresh bread bought the same morning from a kiosk in front of the house, boiled plantains, or boiled white yams.

Today, we scarf it down quickly with boiled yams before piling into the family Peugeot, which we pronounce “Pee-Joe”. “Good morning Mr. Olufodun!” We greet the driver, and soon enough, we hurtle down to join the congested sea of cars.

Photo by Lola Akinmade.

“You get Punch? How about Guardian?” my mom yells out in pidgin English to a newspaper vendor racing alongside the car in traffic. Balancing a stack of newspapers on his head with a few stuffed underneath both armpits, he skillfully pulls out a Punch and exchanges it for a 10 Naira note. Twenty years later and now 100 Naira a pop, this daily ritual of buying Punch Newspaper remains.

Our morning commute takes us to Ikoyi, a suburb off one of the many islands that collectively make up Lagos. We spill out and run through the gates of our primary school, Federal Home Science, just in time for morning assembly as students gather in the dusty yard to sing the national anthem, Arise, O Compatriots.

Once primary school lets out early afternoon, we shuttle off to lessons on Lagos Mainland. After school activities involve more studying. No little football (soccer) leagues or cricket teams. If we want to play football, we form a ragtag team of neighborhood kids in someone’s yard.

We fill up on geography and social studies, and wonder if kids our age in America and the rest of the world have to go to lesson too. During our snack break, we run across the street like Frogger characters to a wooden kiosk to buy meat pies and scotch eggs – boiled eggs coated in minced sausage mix and fried.

Photo by Lola Akinmade.

The clock strikes 5 and it’s time to go home.

Navigating late rush hour traffic, we arrive to a hefty lunch-dinner combo cooked by mom who’d gone out earlier in the day, perusing open air markets to get fresh meat and green leafy vegetables.

“NEEEPPPAAA!*” we yell in unison just as the daily power outage occurs in the middle of our favorite show. Waiting patiently in the dark until the generator grunts, we resume our show without interruption. NEPA affects the TV stations as well.

I fall asleep on my knees as we convene in our parents’ room for nightly prayers before bed. Exhausted yet knowing fully well that the next day will bring more of the same.

*NEPA – Known at the time as Nigeria’s National Electric Power Authority.

Santana Row is the new attraction in San Jose, and my friend Bernardo and I are walking down its smooth, pink sidewalk. Tiny white lights twinkle charmingly in tiny trees, shop windows gleam, and the beautiful people of San Jose mill about, cell phones at the ready.

Even if it were daytime, we couldn’t see the mountains, because the tall, smooth buildings block the view.

Photo by Joe Shlabotnik

San Jose’s real downtown, three miles away, has been in steady decline since a wildly misguided “redevelopment” effort in the 1950s. Now, Santana Row has simply replaced it. Bernardo and I find this upsetting, and predict that the lingering downtown businesses will be gone within five years.

Bernardo can comment on the dying downtown once, and leave it alone, but I can’t stop opining: look at this place, I tell him, it’s so false, pretending to be a “Main Street.”

Main Street my butt, Main Street of Gucci and Starbucks. It’s nice to have public space, but only people who can afford this crap will come here, so, what, public space is an upper-middle-class privilege now?

Bernardo nods and mm-hmms at my ranting, and leads me into a shoe store. We check out price tags: shocking! A clothing store: if we added up the value of every article of clothing we’re wearing between us, we could afford a tank top.

As we head for the door, I see Bernardo slip something into his pocket, and look at him in surprise. He giggles. “Your face, chica!” he cries, and steers me outside by the elbow.

In the light of a streetlamp, he opens his fingers to reveal a pinched-off inch of succulent from the planter in the store window. I feel a grin spread across my face, and then burst into laughter.

Bernardo laughs, too, and we stand there bursting with joy over this filched scrap of life.

We agree to dedicate the rest of the evening to liberating genetic material from the Row. By the time we leave, Bernardo’s pockets are filled with specimens of half a dozen species.

Photo by Marcin Wichary

A few weeks later, in Bernardo’s miracle of a backyard garden, I see our cuttings, green and shiny, rooted in tiny pots along the porch railing. In the side yard, Bernardo’s botanical tribute to the country of his birth: nopales, maguey, corn, beans, squash. A huge avocado tree and all the plants he’s begged, borrowed, or stolen somewhere in this Valley.

As Bernardo leads me around his yard, I realize that for the first time, I don’t hate San Jose. For the first time, I believe that this was once a valley of fruit trees, and before that, a plain of oaks, groomed by fire.

I feel myself claim this place as my hometown: the freeways and shopping malls and suburbs, and in that sea of development, the archipelago of gardens, planters, trees, fields. The mountains that define the valley, just as they always have.

Feature photo by jimbrickett. Photo above by bill barber (off flickr for a bit).

The part of Virginia Beach that matters is a box framed by four roads: Shore Drive and Laskin Road, which run east-west; and Pacific Avenue and Great Neck Road, which run north-south.

The sides of the box are all very distinct. Where Shore Drive meets Pacific is the apex of everything good. Where Great Neck intersects Laskin is the nadir of suburban commerce. Do not pay any attention to this “downtown Virginia Beach” – there is no such thing.

The morning of that day I rose early and drove up to the bookstore and took a table on the patio outside. It was Sunday, a day of change. The seven-day tourists of the south end were coming or going and I had a notebook and a similar intention to go somewhere.

By the end of July this was a recurring theme. I resolved to go into the bookstore and not leave until some tangible plan had been set into place. But then somebody whistled.

Photo by bill barber (off flickr for a bit).

“The hell you are,” Neal said. “Sky’s blue from top to bottom. No day for a bookstore.”

He was cradling his cuppajoe. He said it like that too—cuppajoe—real fast like the caffeine could speak.

We decided to check the waves and we drove off through the tree tunnel down Shore Drive. He was speeding and you don’t speed on Shore Drive—not in the Commonwealth—but there was nothing I could say. Lucky for him no police cars were tucked into the cubby holes of the State Park.

The roadside crosses passed unmentioned and we parked somewhere on the north end and decided to swim.

There were tiny little barrels spinning along the shoreline and we judged each other as we traded waves body surfing. It was small to the point that we had to coil like a spring and push off from the bottom into the face of the wave. Neal won out thanks to an odd rogue wave.

Photo by bill barber (off flickr for a bit).

“Where did that come from?”

He looked toward the mouth of the bay.

“A submarine,” he said.

I looked north and saw it. There was an aircraft carrier too.

When the contest was done we planed out on our backs and rolled with the waves. I knew it was coming. I felt it.

There was the same blue of the morning and the nothingness, and there was an old friend by your side and we would take bikes later through the Narrows and there would be drinks on the porch when the storms finally came and more old friends and all this would happen as it did every day only because it was assumed and never questioned, and thinking of it all, I knew—I knew as it came upon me that I was caught in that idle web for another year.

Maybe after fall, I thought. When the hurricanes have passed. That’s what I’ll do.

Photo above by lunita

Tommy Carson loved doing rails of coke on his dashboard, then barreling his truck down The Bog Road at break-everything speed. Mrs. Allen was having sex with at least two men who weren’t her husband, one possibly under eighteen.

And once, while I was standing in line at The Video Stop to rent Gremlins, I watched Mr. Holland walk in and clock the kid who had slashed his tires the week before.

This is where I grew up. With a population that hovered around 1,000, Bristol, NH seemed like an idyllic lake town to outsiders. It’s the kind of place that cityfolk dreamed about; no stoplights or traffic, no pollution or car alarms, no leashes on dogs.

But as anyone who has grown up in a small town will tell you, there’s a rip current in places like these that can send a soul straight for the rocks. A nice, quiet life sounds possible until monotony takes hold, driving even the nicest old lady to cane the paperboy.

Photo above by Althewebmaster

Google Earth verifies that the town still isn’t much to look at. Life centered around a Cumberland Farms store (“Cumbie’s” to locals), a gas station, a bakery, Bristol Pizza, a bar and a lone fancy restaurant. Many houses were treated as works in progress, with half-built additions and porches propped up on concrete blocks. Quite a few residents tapdanced above the poverty line, just one transmission repair away from not being able to buy milk.

School was colorful. There were the teachers, who had to deal with everything from bus sex to shutting off televisions when the O-rings failed a spaceship carrying the state’s favorite teacher, Christa McAuliffe. I especially remember the French teacher, who taught the language with a New Hampshire accent so thick that it has since made me the laughingstock of every restaurant in Paris.

Photo above by libraryimages.net

There were my best friends, a brother and sister who had rescued me from excellent grades and fashioned me as a hoodlum. Matt smoked two packs a day at fourteen and Debbie had a habit of making other girls’ faces collide with her fist. We’d down Soco while waiting for the bus, which could be quite late, given that its first pickup was thirty miles down a rural route.

Most women seemed to trudge along with a tinge of buyer’s remorse when it came to their children, while men worked speed-fueled shifts at the local plant. There were never any arguments involving ethnicity because there wasn’t a single person of color – the town was still 96% white as of the 2000 census. Mr. Shakey, whose grocery store parking lot was THE place to hang out, seemed only able to hire high school girls who had developed earlier than the rest of their class. The cops were a Deniro kind of ruthless, all seeming to have a side bet as to how many kids they could toss into Juvie.

Photo above by Derek DMan

Winter began in November and ended in April, with temperatures so low that ski masks were a fashionable accessory. John Cheever wrote here during the summer but was smart enough to evacuate before the leaves started falling. Every road led to a mountain and every mountain was next to another. And every inch would be blanketed with snow by December. Most houses were a lighter color from four feet up because the snow banks didn’t permit sunshine until they melted.

Despite the underbelly, there was nothing sinister about Bristol. It was the kind of town you’d drive through while singing to your radio, completely unaware that a population had just passed. Most drama happened behind closed doors, allowing it to be a wonderful place to visit but a tricky place to live. I have not been back in many years and I do not think that I would want to. I don’t want to know if there is a Papa Gino’s, or if what was made in factory has been outsourced to Korea. I don’t want to hear if Tommy is finally Working The Steps or if they now have Gremlins on Blue Ray. I like how it sits in my brain just fine; a sleepy little town full of invisible nightmares.

Photo above by Ed Karjala

Feature Photo: theothermattm (Flickr creative commons)

Arriving from the airport, I cross the village and, running alongside my former secondary school, head up Via Nessi, then Via Matteotti. After a while I reach Piazza degli Eroi (Heroes Square), and my house, an old-fashioned building dating back to 1870.

The first night we talk family updates over a huge dinner of fresh lasagne followed by wild beef steak with a side dishes of crispy season vegetables.

Kitchens in Sardinia are the main rooms of the house and the windows are kept open–winter and summer alike–to enjoy the calm of early afternoon or evening.

Waking up the next day in my childhood room, I realize that I don’t need to be ready in fifteen minutes to catch the bus.

In fact, in Ghilarza there are no buses. In half an hour you can easily walk from one side to the other along il Viale, a long boulevard that marks the end of Ghilarza and the entrance to the adjacent village, Abbasanta.

Photo by SingAsong ♫

In the center of Ghilarza is the Piazza di Chiesa (Church Square), with a post office, a market, and the smell of spit-roasted chicken at Da Cristina and homemade wheat bread at Pische. Around one o’clock the town seems to be falling asleep: all shops are closed.

And just after lunch you might see only one or two cars and just a few folks–retired farmers or masons, meeting up in their favorite bar for a poker game.

My window opens to the main street Corso Umberto, named after the former Italian King Umberto I. As a teenager, I used to watch amusedly as black-dressed ladies rushed to the church for the 7am Holy Mass.

In Ghilarza, Catholic pulpits are taken very seriously. Every single child has gone through the first four holy sacraments up to the Confirmation.

Photo by cristianocani

Three times a year Ghilarza has the mysterious atmosphere of a ghost town. For nine days each time the inhabitants move to tiny built-up areas to worship three important Saints of the Catholic calendar.

Celebrations start only after the Saints’ statues have been brought to visit and bless every single house. Once celebrations have started, all the houses are left open so that you can go back and forth to anybody’s place, stopping for lunch, dinner or just a drink.

On the day of my departure my parents’ main worry is that I can’t taste everything on menu they had prepared for me. So the last lunch must be memorable: a starter of seafood salad is followed by pasta with mussels.

After lunch I know what to do: my baggage is ready, some home-made delicacies packed, a last glimpse at my room before switching off the light and going down the cool stairs, promising it won’t be so long before the next visit.

Feature and above photo by Norm Walsh.

I grew up in Bedford, MA, an old Revolutionary War town wedged between Lexington and Concord. Bedford is moderate in all regards. Poorer than Lexington and Concord and without the war fame, but not quite as poor as Billerica to the north, whose strip club and blue-collar ballsiness give it limitless intrigue.

Burlington, to the east, has a comparable demographic to Bedford’s, but its sprawling commercial district—anchored by the Burlington Mall and AMC Cinema—draws immense traffic and makes the town a place of many options. Carlisle, to the northwest, is woodsy and rich, and dotted with farmland.

Bedford, cruelly surrounded by so many places of interest, offers little more than a good school system and the easily ignored legacy of having the first flag in America. (The Bedford Flag shows a metal-plated arm protruding from a cloud and waving a dagger at the words “Vince aut Morire”—Conquer or Die.)

Back when I was growing up, the main thing to do was hang out in someone’s basement and watch TV, or wander the streets like a vagrant. When I was 17 I fell into eight handles of Smirnoff vodka, and so spent my last years of high school sneaking off to various places—house parties, “the shack” off Davis Road, the abandoned train tracks in Billerica—to get drunk with friends, as did everyone else I knew.

Eager to leave after high school, I headed off to college in Maine to become a wicked booze-hound and redneck. I drank myself stupid, bought some guns, took up hunting and fishing, and tried my best not to get involved with politics.

When I graduated college I strayed even further, finding work on a salmon boat up in Bristol Bay, AK. But that quickly turned sour, and I ended up running away in the middle of the night, back to Bedford to wallow in shame at the old house.

I have since moved out and back, living for a year in Boston then attempting another half-brained adventure which put me squarely on my ass yet again. And that’s exactly how it feels. No matter what I do here, I get the sense that I am sitting down. Bedford is a place for sitting: not for falling backwards, but not for moving forwards either.

I’ll have productive days—fishing, splitting wood, disputing medical bills—and I’ll have days when I do nothing but lie on the couch and watch old episodes of “The Simpsons,” which I TiVo fanatically. Two weeks ago a friend asked me if I would paint his house, and I gladly accepted. The work is moving along, but the paint is drying slowly because the nights are so cold.

The leaves are starting to turn now and the wood stoves are burning at night. Fall approaches. And though fall brings the promise of hunting and flannel underwear, I can stay here no longer. I have sat long enough—nearly two months—and I am anxious to stand up, and walk away.

We pull off the highway through a quaint 19th century town called Cambridge, where the buildings still have the flat brick storefronts of an early frontier town, and people’s accents have a country twang to them—not quite Southern, not Minnesotan either; distinctly Ohioan.

We get pie at Theo’s Diner. One slice of chocolate peanut butter and one of cherry, both smothered in whipped cream. It is delightfully in defiance of the food pyramid and the paranoid foodie trends of the nation’s urban centers.

The waitress calls me “Sweetie” and looks concerned when I don’t finish the last bite. She’s got on pale blue jeans and her hair is a bright blond and all styled up in case some cute farmer, trucker, or local boy comes in looking for something other than pie. She is all business at work, dishing out and picking up hamburgers and fries and sides of green beans and mashed potatoes, all with a red-lipsticked local smile, and that Ohio twang.

Photo by seamusiv

As we pull out of Cambridge, we enter the county roads, where we’re occasionally stalled behind an Amish buggy trotting along at a 19th century pace. We take in the pastures where the goldenrod and Queen Ann’s Lace of summer are beginning to fade, and the grasses are taking on the rusty colors of fall.

Photo by RebeccaPollard

There are cows and horses grazing in the distance, and the textures and colors of the land bring me back to this local place, this base layer of home that I simply can’t peel away, no matter how many other homes I accumulate on the road. This time I am coming back from a year in Beijing, and I am in need of my family and Ohio’s solitude and anonymity.

I know tonight we will sit on the front porch, and watch the sky darken pink to blue to midnight over the pastures to the sound of crickets. Maybe the neighbors will come by with salsa they have canned, or a few ears of corn, and we’ll chat for a few minutes about their new dog and my trip to China.

When it gets dark, it will get cold, the first delightful chill of fall before the serious cold of winter. We’ll go inside, and snuggle into our beds in the silence of that deep Ohio night, lost somewhere in the middle, in the heart of it all, which no one knows about and where no one seems to go.

Feature photo by nophun201. Photo above by code poet.

My hometown is a little known municipality of just over 7000, but as of late has become the new location of several political journalists and the starting point for the new conservative superstar of American politics.

Wasilla, Alaska, rests in the belly of the Matanuska Valley, a place famous for giant produce (think 100+ lb cabbages) thanks to near 24-hour daylight during the peak growing season.

It is on the way to Anchorage if you’re arriving by road from Canada, and on the way to Denali National Park if arriving by plane in Anchorage. Wasilla has small town charm, I guess, but most of the buildings are low and nothing special to look at; half the year they’re covered in snow, the other half, mud.

The real charm is the landscape this town was plopped down in: neighborhoods are still on dirt roads, forests are still rich in life, the streams are still clear, and the mountains are so close, rugged and blue you feel like you’re standing in a postcard.

Photo by lizstless.

My childhood home looked out over the mud flats, a huge expanse of land that sunk to sea level in the 1964 earthquake and has since turned into marshland scattered with moose, bear, and enormous flocks of migrating birds (mostly geese and crane, both of which make their presence known with a cacophony of sound that is utterly and indescribably chaotic, irritating and gorgeous).

The pond up the street from our house wasn’t much to look at, except when beavers moved back in and built a dam or the occasional muskrat lingered for a few days. A little further up that dusty road was the creek salmon traversed in the summer, and we ice skated on in the winter. If you’ve never seen a creek literally moving with salmon on the way to their spawning grounds, you’ve not really experienced the full cycle of life.

It’s like staring into a fire late at night before crawling into your sleeping bag and gazing at the stars; you’re mesmerized, and even though you know there are wonderful things around you to see, you can’t break away.

My friends and I used to ‘rescue’ salmon stuck in the shallows by heaving them into deeper pools, until we were old enough to realize that handling the fish at this point in their migration was neither helpful nor legal.

Photo by mcav0y.

I haven’t lived there for many years, but visit occasionally. I always make time for that creek, and try to be there late in the summer when the salmon make their annual trek. Sitting and watching those waters now is like bearing witness to one of the gravest tragedies of our time – they’re so still.

While the politics of Wasilla and the vast state of Alaska are becoming talking-head sound bites, I can’t help but be drawn back into thoughts of the life that pulses through that landscape. It is eloquent and primal, rugged and fragile, my hometown, a world away.