Sunday, April 01, 2007

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.

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