A Glimpse Into My Future
"What colleges are you applying to?" "Do you know what you want to major in?" "Are you going to get a dorm or live at home?" Every high school senior has heard these questions...
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How I Traveled the World (and Time) in One Day
As I walk through this tunnel of bamboo and listen to the wind whistling...
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Answering a Mother’s Call
Dawn’s warm sunbeams peered through cloud cover at intervals, illuminating patches of emerald rice patties throughout the low-lying mountains of Southern India’s ghats; the faintest of breezes glided...
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Searching for Sunrises
My eyes are barely open as I unzip the tent fly and stumble outside onto the wet, morning grass. I wonder why I can’t remember hearing the sound of rain the night before, then realize that it must...
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VSA (Vacation of Scholarly Acceptance)
Merriam-Webster says that a vacation is a period of time spent away from work in order to rest or travel, but my vacation was much more than that. My time spent in Nashville, Tennessee, blended together...
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Beyond the Brass Handle
In first grade, my teacher asked us to bring in postcards from all the exotic places we’d been in our lives. My friends brought back little cards with photographs of beautiful beaches, tall towers,...
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The City Does Not Have Soul– It Reflects Your Own
Living in Midcoast Maine and competing in the USEF equestrian circuit throughout New England, I am no stranger to travel. I have experienced the beckoning of a rustic, quaint town as well as the calm...
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Oatmeal Walls and Sticky Sunlight
My body is about to give out, completely and pathetically. My heartbeat is slamming against my temples. And my parents are not here to ask if I am okay. It is just me and my clammy sheets of skin. The...
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The Art of Living: An Effortless Community
I almost cried when we stepped into our room in the Ashram.HONORABLE MENTION 2015 FTF TEEN TRAVEL WRITING SCHOLARSHIPThe Spartan room held four cots, each laden with a sparse cotton...
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Open Your Eyes and Let Yourself Fly
We arrived at the La Casa Del Arbol in Baños, Ecuador. I was overwhelmed with beauty as I gazed over the mountain...
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Let’s Be Ambassadors for Responsible Travel
The way we travel can have a long-lasting impact on the places we visit. Last year, while traveling for a documentary I am making called The...
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The Day I Got Released and Confined
April 1, 2013 – to most people this date is not important; they just brush it off as a day that people try to play...
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Nobel Week with the Swedes
Never did I think I would be in a room with the greatest minds of our time. Yet here I was sitting only rows away from them hearing their amazing plans for change. I had...
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Cammino di Assisi: The Characters and Challenges that Made It So Much More than an Italian Pilgrimage
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Naïve Yet Sophisticated — A Journey to Paradise
Pupils dilated and fist clenched, my heart palpitating as we make our way up the prominent Rocky Mountains. All I am telling myself is “I can’t believe I’m here, I can’t believe I’m seeing this.”...
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Millennium
As I was running along the River Thames with my classmates to catch our group’s bus I realized that everything...
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Keep Dreaming
The real magic happens when I close my eyes. I usually squeeze them really tight when I want to get a good feel of the ocean breeze in my face. As the sun settles in for the night, the sand beneath...
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The Lone Mushroom
In an attempt to discover pieces of myself that may have been hidden, I decided in the spring of 2014 to explore the...
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A Journey Through the Holocaust
Over the February break of my junior year, I took a trip with a select number of students to Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland on a Holocaust tour. Whenever I tell people about my decision...
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Israel: Discovering a Land of Cats and Conflict
Israel is a place that means many different things to many different people. When I made my first visit to the Promised Land, I came hoping to gain new perspective on a country that’s experienced...
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Simple and Free
The wind fanned my sweat-sticky face as I rode on the back of my dad’s motorbike. It was our last day in Thailand and already half of it was wasted. We had planned to leave the mainland early in...
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Seeing the Ocean: The Trans-Catalina Trail
The Trans-Catalina Trail is a 37.2-mile backpacking endeavor. It wraps around Catalina Island—the island where I was raised. The trailhead spirals above the small town of Avalon, through the hilly...
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A Love Affair With The City Of Love
Each and every year, my family sets off on a trip to Paris, France: the City of Love. It is my absolute favorite place in the worl,d and I love it...
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My Journey With How
How? A word used to unlock a treasure chest of the unknown during my days as a child, a simple syllable that revealed everything I wished to discover. “How does this work?”
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Forest, Farm, and Southern Charm: Why Hayden, Alabama Is the Best Southern Travel Destination You’ve Never Heard Of
Never heard of Hayden, Alabama? No surprises there. According to the 2010 U.S. census, Hayden had a population of 444 and no stoplights. Some of its attractions include two lovely...
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Sunshine. Simplicity. Ssenga.
Early morning rays shine on mud-brick houses and the dirt road which weaves between them. Tin roofs glitter beneath pink and orange clouds, and green gardens are covered with droplets of dew. Everything...
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Leesburg, Come Enjoy the Outdoors
From the moment that I crossed over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, I knew my life would change. The hustle and bustle of big city life would become a distant memory as we drove down the interstate...
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Small Town Escape
My community is a small town nestled between the mountains that form Utah Valley. At first glance, it probably looks like just some town in some state, but that's only because a person needs...
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The Ocean, the Town, and the People
San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico is a place that I have visited and identified with for many years now. It is beautiful and intriguing in so many ways and I recommend...
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My Small Town of Wadsworth
When a person hears I live in Wadsworth Ohio, they usually don’t give it a second thought, or say “oh, you mean Hick Ville!?” In my mind I think of how mentally blind some people...
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Finding Home in a Grain of Sand
A desert by definition is dry. The sun scorches the desert as one squeezes the liquid from a towel. It's not easy to call a place like that home, and it isn't easy to get used to either. But on...
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Timeless: A Cottage on Laurel Lake
Laughing. Smiling. Crying. Throwing family members off the dock. Swimming into the late hours of the night. Dazzling Fourth of July fireworks. Hundreds of picturesque memories...
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Exploring the Essence of America: Mint Hill, NC
Flying down the 485 freeway through the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, you might easily miss the exit marking my hometown. But if your a spirited adventurer keen on understanding the the patterns...
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Quaint and Fierce: Burke, Virginia
Burke is a small little suburban town in Virginia, full of peaceful scenery, and a loving community. While it’s not the ideal picturesque town that would be used for a painting on the surface,...
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White Cloud: A Hidden Town
Most people would write a blog about their hometown or a foreign place like London or Paris. I have chosen a place that is hidden and unknown to many. It is a place that I feel...
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The Melting Pot
I live in a town most people are not familiar with, or if they are familiar with it, there is nothing but hurtful words that escape their mouth. If people would take just one, maybe two hours of...
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In Which I Discover Myself in Argentina
The sun was hot, bright, high in the sky, the twelve o’ clock beams filtering in through the heavy wooden shutters of my window. I smiled, waking up softly as one gently caressed my face, like...
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That’s Where We Wanna Go…Way Down to Kokomo
Sometimes it seems like the Beach Boys were in a state of delusion when the band wrote their well-known song, Kokomo. The song comes on the radio here in Indiana, and we all sit back to think, “I...
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My Small ( Bordering-On-Nonexistent) Town
Eskridge, Kansas. You have probably never heard of this town. Most people, even those who only live a mere 30 miles away, haven’t either. So don’t feel too bad....
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Small Town, Big Heart
To prove to you that Ho-Ho-Kus, located in New Jersey, is the best town, let me show you around. First things first, you have to eat...
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Home Is Where You Make It
Where is home? Well I've always said that home is where you make it, but Versailles, Indiana is the place I was raised at and it is where I continue...
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The Long and Winding Way
Every path, no matter how long and winding it can be, has a horizon. Every long walk, no matter how tiring and tedious it is for a small child walking with her parents, ends at an unforeseen destination,...
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True Colors of Castro
I came out to myself during college. I never accepted my sexuality prior and this drove me to the point of madness. I desired to know and understand who I was as a gay and I knew that the only place where...
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