Birds at the Feeder, Magazine in Milan

It's a blue sky spring day here in Kingdom country and I'm drenched in sun, typing on the porch, chickadees at the feeder and a partridge just thrummed. Chittering squirrels.

My essay "Accountibility" has been translated into Italian and published in the magazine Permalink, which you can download as a pdf here. The original English version is on rucksackwanderer.com, at this link.

I'm busy making changes to rucksackwanderer.com so that it will look OK in the Internet Explorer web browser. If you still use Internet Explorer, switch to Firefox. It's better.

Jet Lag

I'm back in the US of A, cat on my lap nuzzling at my hand as I type, snow on the hills outside. My parents drove 8 hours roundtrip through sleet on dark highways to meet me at the airport with a bag of all my favorite foods - smoked cheddar cheese, dark Vermont bread, a bag of baby carrots, a Fuji apple - to tell the truth, the main reason why I feel comfortable traveling so far is because I know I have a wonderful family waiting for me back home.

Spring in Vermont is a good time to write, and that's what I'll be doing for the next few months. Look for more content on Matador Travel and a piece on Luang Prabang should be out soon in the travel section of a pretty good sized paper - exciting times. I'm thinking of taking a writing course this summer, but by June I'm sure the high mountains of the West will prove irresistible. I've got some inside info on wilderness areas in Colorado scrawled on various pages of my travel journal, much of it hard to decipher - names of towns that are names of rocks, like Marble and Basalt, something about a Frying Pan and a rather disturbing note that reads - BLOOD OF CHRIST!!!! (spanish) - that I believe dates to a late night encounter with two Mountain Divas in Vang Vieng, Laos. Clarifications and suggestions are welcome.

Good times.

Breaking News Headlines in the World of Tim

I'm trying to make www.rucksackwanderer.com into my professional website and keep Sleeping In The Mountains as a more personal, unedited forum for sharing thoughts and staying in touch with family and friends. In that spirit, here are some personal updates.

This segment of my travels is coming to a close. One week from today I'll fly from Bangkok to Tokyo and spend a whirlwind week visiting my Japanese host family in Yamanashi, catching up with Williams friend Yosuke Nishibayashi in Tokyo and exploring the base of Mt. Fuji with Rika Saito. I'm lucky to have friends in Japan because - despite a recent Western Union transfusion - I'll be pretty much out of traveler's checks when I get there.

Ryan and I may have left Cambodia, but the work of Expedition Cambodia is only just beginning. We recently scored a feature article in an Australian adventure travel magazine called GET LOST and are preparing another feature for WEND, a new adventure mag in Portland, Oregon. I feel more of a need to write and more confident about making it as a travel writer than I have at any point during this trip.

My travels have radicalized, saddened and inspired me. They have forced me to confront hard questions, about totalitarianism, about poverty, about what it means to be a wealthy American and own stock in multinational mining companies. I'm falling in love with a place that my country once sought to systematically destroy for no rational reason. I'm thinking about selling my stock, refusing to pay U.S. taxes, building a tea house deep in the woods and never taking off my rubber tire sandals. But I don't think I'll actually do all of these things.

In April and May I'll be home in Vermont, working on the web page and writing. In June I am torn between going to Jamie and Joel's wedding in Williamstown and hiking the length of Vermont on the long trail or going West, and joining Jon Langer and Nick Brandfon in the Rockies for a study on the potential effects of climate change on large predators like lynx and grizzly bears.

In September Ryan Driscoll is getting married in D.C.

Beyond that, the Himalayas call.