When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things
It was a year of travel to new and old places, the year I started my dissertation, the year I hiked eight miles and up volcanic sands while pregnant, the year we bought a wagon to take Argos on adventures again, and most importantly, the year that I become a mom.
Read MoreOur final day on Maui was much more relaxed (at least for me) than the previous. While Ryan went on a scuba diving excursion to the Lahaina Cathedrals (which was one of his favorite parts of the whole trip), I got a prenatal massage at the spa at the neighboring hotel to ours and read a book on the balcony. We then spent the rest of the day lounging in the pool and enjoying some farmer’s market soursop (a fruit I’ve only ever had in Hawai’i and am obsessed with).
Read MoreBy far one of the most famous activities to do on Maui is to drive the Road to Hana, a 64-mile stretch of highway along the coast, connecting Kahului to Hana. While the drive technically only takes three hours, what’s special about it is the number of roadside stops to see waterfalls, buy fresh banana bread, and take dips in the ocean. so plan on spending much more than a few hours on this excursion. While ideally you would stay the night in Hana to maximize your time for pit stops, it is possible to hit some of the highlights in a single day.
Read MoreToday was our big hiking day on Maui and one of the days I was most excited for on Maui. Haleakalā National Park is named for the dormant volcano that last erupted between 1480 and 1600 and rises 10,023 feet above sea level. Haleakalā means “house of the sun” in Hawaiian, and this name is derived from the legend that says the demigod Maui imprisoned the sun here in order to lengthen the day to provide people more time to dry cloth and grow food.
Read MoreAs of writing this post, the Maui wildfires are still ongoing after starting around the beginning of August 2023. We stayed near Lahaina, which is where the deadliest fire burned an estimated 2,170 acres and completely destroyed the historic town. About 2,200 buildings were fully or partially burned, about 86% of which are residential, and the death toll is at 115, though 850 people are still listed as missing. Part of the reason for the severity of this fire is underinvestment in local infrastructure (this wildfire had been predicted many time) and instead a focus on tourism that is damaging Hawai’i in myriad ways, from housing costs to clean water access. If you do intend on visiting Hawai’i, make sure you do so with an investment in the local economy and culture in mind, as well as consideration for the health of the local residents (COVID being brought by tourists to areas without sufficient hospital infrastructure is a huge issue).
Read MoreThe Kohala Volcano is the oldest of the volcanoes that make up the Big Island, and when part of this volcano slid into the ocean hundreds of thousands of years ago, it formed the sea cliffs along the Kohala Coast. Erosion has formed seven valleys along this coastline, including Pololū Valley, the most northern valley, then Honokāne Nui, Honokāne Iki, Honokeʻa, Honopue, Waimanu Valley, and Waipi’o Valley. Waipi’o Valley is the most famous, perhaps because of its daring grade or the breathtaking views through the cliffs and back into the valley. We faced Waipi’o last time we visited the Big Island (read about that hike here), but it has actually since been closed to non-locals. Since we loved Waipi’o so much, we decided to do another of the Kohala Coast hikes and settled on Pololū Valley, which is a short but steep hike down to a black sand beach.
Read MoreThe last time Ryan and I went to Hawai’i, it was for our honeymoon in 2021, and we visited the Big Island and Kauai (read about that trip here). This spring, when we found out we were expecting our baby girl, the first big plans that we wanted to make were for our babymoon, and we figured what better place to go to celebrate our growing family than where we celebrated our marriage. Flights were cheapest to the Big Island (by several hundred dollars) and since it was our favorite island, we opted to return there for a few of the days on our trip. The other part of our time, we wanted to explore a new island, and we decided on Maui.
Read MoreDid you know the Everglades is actually a river? The water in the Everglades moves about 100 ft. per day down into Florida Bay. The majority of Florida’s fresh water comes from the Everglades, and drainage of the wetlands and artificial control over Lake Okeechobee to expand urban development has continually threatened access to clean, fresh water for the state; the park was created to protect this resource, as well as the many plants and animals that call this place home. The Everglades contain the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere, the most significant breeding ground for tropical wading birds in North America, and thirty-six threatened or protected animal species, including the Florida panther, American crocodile, and West Indian manatee. The Everglades are also significant for the number of different ecosystems it contains: freshwater sloughs and marl prairies (low-lying areas covered in water, where the nickname “River of Grass” comes from), tropical hardwood hammocks (islands of subtropical and tropical trees that rise above the sloughs), pine rockland forests, cypress and mangrove systems (Florida’s first and best defense against hurricanes, as they disperse the impact of flood waters and prevent coastal erosion), coastal lowlands (or saltwater marshes), and the marine ecosystem of Florida Bay.
Read MoreIf you caught the sense of foreboding at the end of my day five post, it will come as no surprise to you that I woke up on day six feeling as if a train had hit me. As a person who, before this, hadn’t been truly sick since undergrad, I was not doing well. My throat was sore beyond belief, I was full of snot, and I was clearly running a fever. I sent Ryan to the corner store to get some miraculous European cough drops (ones that actual make your throat feel better instead of just being sugary candy like American ones!) and Sprite, then hoped to sleep off whatever mystery illness had befallen me while Ryan took on our itinerary solo.
Read MoreThere were several Christmas markets centrally located in Brussels: La Bourse de Bruxelles Market, Place de Brouckère, and Marché aux Poissons Market. We visited these markets, ate some raclette, and despite me being fluent (or at least being fluent at one time) in French, I made Ryan order everything because ~ anxiety ~. This did hilariously result in Ryan convincing some stall-owners he did actually speak French (I would tell him what to say), but when they asked a follow-up question, he’d look so confused that they’d figure out he was American. We also spent awhile watching the chaos of ice-skating, enthralled by the two guys who were evidently in competition to show off their skills and kept almost making a lot of newbies wipe out (and actually did cause a few falls).
Read MoreWe heard about the Hortus Botanicus from our Festival of Lights tour guide, and it didn’t take much convincing for me to add this to the itinerary. The Hortus Botanicus is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world, established in 1638 by the Amsterdam city council (the Oxford Botanic Garden is one of the few older ones; check out my last visit to it in 2017). Like many European botanic gardens, its collections were initially amassed through imperial pursuits—in this case, largely by the Dutch East India Company. Much of its initial collection served either a medicinal or commercial purpose.
Read MoreOn day three of our trip, we trekked to Amsterdam Centraal to catch an early train to The Hague, a city most famous for hosting the UN’s International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. The city’s name often graced manila envelopes when I worked a summer at an attorney’s office, but I’d not really considered going there until it came up on a list of the best Christmas markets in the Netherlands.
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