Place

In the narrow strait between Jura and Scarba, the sea does strange things. Standing waves barrel over phantom surf breaks. Steely waters seethe and swirl, as if stirred by invisible hands. No wonder the gulf’s name, Corryvreckan, means “cauldron of the speckled seas” in Gaelic; this is the world’s third largest whirlpool, classified as “unnavigable” by the Royal Navy. Yet here I am, aboard a thirty-seven-foot rigid inflatable boat (RIB), riding the rapids. Skipper Sandy Campbell cuts the engine so we can try “boat surfing,” the swell dragging us apace past Scarba’s looming quartzite cliffs. Islanders of old dreamt up mystical explanations for this phenomenon.

"Insane, isn’t it?!” Kyle yelled from thirty feet below, leaning back on his snowboard to watch me struggle. I summoned every ounce of strength in my jet-lagged body to prize my legs, still attached to skis, from several feet of fresh snow. Wedged sideways, I pulled myself up by a tree root, alternating between hysterical laughter and acute panic as little progress was made in five minutes. I’d come to Japan for the powder — and I’d sure found it on my first morning in Furano, Hokkaidō. Fighting to stand up, I steeled myself to tackle the impossibly light powder reaching my armpits, on the widest skis I’d ever clipped into. It really did feel different to snow in the US or Europe. This would take some getting used to. “You said you wanted ‘Japow’!

Beneath a stunning Della Robbia Crucifixion a lone candle burns on the floor of the Holy Stigmata Chapel in the sanctuary of La Verna. The immense tranquility belies the astonishing events that occurred in 1224 on this rocky outcrop in central Italy’s Umbrian hills. The chapel marks the spot where, two years before his death, Saint Francis, retreated to fast and pray with two of his brother friars. After some weeks, Francis saw a six-winged Seraphim, apparently crucified, who appeared and imposed the five wounds of Christ’s Passion on his body — in paintings the angel appears to be “lasering” St. Francis, who is often depicted as a sort of Franciscan version of Willem Dafoe getting it at the end of the film Platoon — including the nails protruding. Heady stuff.

We were somewhere around the Palazzo when the drugs began to take hold. Unlike Hunter S. Thompson, though, we were surrounded not by imaginary bats but an amiable crowd of agèd hippies. Our destination was the Las Vegas Sphere, to hear Dead & Company. The venue itself eschews the definite article, but it’s futile. No one says they’re going to Sphere. It’s too much of a destination. It needs the definite article. Security was rather lax, though the price of tickets plus the age of the average attendee greatly lessened the chances of anyone showing up with mayhem on his mind. After going through a metal detector, where we are instructed not to empty our pockets, we headed up the stairs to find our seats.

"You have a big mountain to climb!" is not the sort of text you eagerly await from your girlfriend’s father. But Billy, a true Southern gent, meant no ambiguity. As dawn cracked the alarms sounded in our Airbnb and six of us bundled into the back of the Dodge. A cool mist hung in the valley as “Baba O’Riley (Teenage Wasteland)” started up on the radio and got the blood running. At 6:15 a.m. we entered the shadow of Emigrant Peak, which at 10,921 feet, commands Montana’s Paradise Valley. Emigrant owes its name to Thomas Curry, a pioneer who struck gold in a creek on the east side of the mountain in 1863.

The world’s obsession with the Maldives has always been a mystery to me. I’ve witnessed as, one after the other, even my most beach-averse and device-addicted friends returned from these islands entranced by some ineffable quality, only able to give the vaguely cult-like response: “You have to experience it to understand.” One quietly admitted to spending more on her honeymoon there than on the wedding itself. Apparently, it had been entirely worth it. Having worked in travel for many years, I’ve been inundated with the pictures we’ve all seen a thousand times: lines of pristine over-water villas, tranquil turquoise ocean contrasting with startlingly white sand, all running together in a blur of gorgeous, but dare I say it, borderline sameness.

When I visited New York for the first time in a decade recently, one of its most famous living writers, Paul Auster, died on the day I arrived. This was not, I hope, anything to do with my presence in the city he spent decades memorializing; he had been suffering from terminal cancer for a considerable time. Yet as I sat at my desk at the first hotel I was visiting, the Frederick in Tribeca — a comfortable and well-located spot, let down slightly by its surly and unhelpful staff, but redeemed by stylish touches like a tiled map of nineteenth-century Manhattan built into the well-appointed shower — and started to write a tribute to Auster for our website, it made me wonder what, exactly, I was trying to find out about literary New York. Was I exploring its distinguished past?