a Geographer's Place

Between 2015 and 2025, I spent a lot of time in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In fact, we've lived in Amman. Twice. And I've been to Petra dozens of times, spent weeks at a time exploring Wadi Rum, and basically traveled the entire country multiple times. Wadi Rum is extra special to me. It's vast. Epic. A wide-open space that is difficult to fathom, even when you're standing  in  it. We have incredible friends there and have spent multiple summers doing fieldwork all around, across, and through the Hisma . We've even slept outside several times, just laying on the sand next to a small, Bedouin fire, watching the colors of the Milky Way become more and more vibrant throughout the night. It is quite the experience waking up in the middle of the night and staring into  the Milky Way -- not just see the cloudiness from it's namesake, but seeing it in color , like the pictures often seen from telescopes. Amazing. On one of these overnights, we were camping next t...

I've told this story many times over the years and to many different people. But I've never actually taken the time to write it down. Well...now's that time! So first some backstory... Where I went to elementary and secondary school, everyone knew that if you took three years of Spanish in middle and/or high school, you would be eligible to participate in "The Mexico Trip" (what I would today call a "Short-term Travel Study"). It was basically 10 or 12 days in Mexico, starting in Mexico City, having a short homestay in Guadalajara, and then a few final days in Mazatlán. This was a program that had been set up and run since the 1970s and into the late 1990s. And it was always run by the Spanish teacher(s) -- not an EF Tour or other tour guide-led type of program. The Spanish teacher was  the tour leader. I had two (?) older siblings that took advantage of the opportunity in the mid-1970s and, although I was very young when they did, their stories were hou...

If you would have told me a decade ago I would be living in the Caribbean (again), but this time for long-term, I would have said, "Cool". But then moved on to something else, and not given it another thought. But now, nearly a decade later, here we are. Living --thriving! -- full-time on a beautiful slice of the Lesser Antilles. Looking out the window, I see the tropical flowers -- the red hibiscus, the yellow trumpets, the purple sea sage, the orange verbena -- and, beyond our back fence, a couple hundred yards of seaside grass with the occasional sea grape tree. And then that characteristic Caribbean blue water with small white caps showing where the offshore reefs are. You can hear the waves crash into the cliff. At night, when it's still, you can  feel  the waves hit the cliffside, their reverberation traveling through the atmosphere and lithosphere. That pounding sound was scary at first -- our neighborhood is uncannily quiet, and at night all you hear are the waves...