Foraging Local Food

I went out and picked some fiddlehead ferns this morning, then caught some horned pout in the afternoon. I was hoping for brook trout, but pout are tasty little fish, too.

Here in Craftsbury there's lots of wild, local food available, but we're not unique. You can forage just about anywhere, even in some cities.

This post by David DeFranza is a good introductory guide to foraging.

Check Out Matador Abroad

Remember Matador? The online community for travelers? In the past few years Matador has published a bunch of my feature articles, and when Brave New Traveler and Matador joined forces, I began editing for them on a regular basis.

These days, Matador is really taking off. As print travel magazines hemorrhage cash, we're closing new ad deals, becoming profitable, welcoming thousands of new members and publishing some pretty spectacular content on a whole network of travel sites.

Along with Sarah Menkedick, an immensely talented writer who lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, I'm editing Matador Abroad, a site that focuses on study abroad and long-term travel. Sarah and I have put a lot of work into Matador Abroad recently, and I'd appreciate it if you could stop by and leave us some comments.

A good place to start is an excellent essay Sarah wrote yesterday called "Why You Should Travel In Times Of Swine Flu".

And remember, if you have an article to pitch, you've got a friend in the editor's chair!

My Land In Craftsbury Common, VT

Last fall I closed on 2 acres of pasture just west of Craftsbury Common. The land is sloping and a little wet, but the views are gorgeous and it's just a 2 minute walk from the Common, the library, the post office, the high-school and Sterling College.

Here's a nice photo of the Common.

This summer I plan to break ground on my future homestead, although after the septic system goes in I probably won't have any money left for actual construction.

Right now the water well is in (only 220' deep, which was lucky) and I've got a couple Adirondack chairs in the meadow, which were gifts from my parents.

This morning I went up to the land, set up my tent and took a few photos. Come visit!

Happy Anniversary, Worldhum.com!

Worldhum.com is celebrating their 8th anniversary of publishing travel stories. Congrats to Mike Yessis, Jim Benning and the whole Worldhum team.

Read: Pico Iyer's classic essay "Why We Travel" - a Worldhum original.

Update From Laos

Coming at you from Luang Prabang, Laos. I'm currently designing the itinerary and curriculum for the Mekong River Semester Program that Where There Be Dragons will offer this fall. I've been in Laos for about a month now, following short visits to established Dragons semester programs in Kathmandu, Nepal and Varanasi, India.

Soon, though, I'll be home in Vermont, breaking ground on my cabin.

Here are some links to my recent articles:

10 Travel Jobs Within Your Reach

Put Some Damn Clothes On

Christians Gird For War In Myanmar

Clean Coal

New Article! Youth Travel Programs

Each summer, thousands of North American high-school students travel abroad with organizations that specialize in educational travel programs.

Where There Be Dragons

Many of these lucky students return home with increased self-confidence, a heightened understanding of global issues, fabulous photos for Facebook, and a college essay topic that will impress even the most ruthless Ivy League admissions officer.

Parents and students who decide to invest in an educational travel program should be applauded, but choosing the right program is a daunting and complicated task. Dozens of organizations specialize in youth travel, and among these organizations there are tremendous variations in travel style, educational philosophy, and overall quality.

Continue reading How To Choose A Summer Youth Travel Program

Latest Myanmar Feature

My latest feature from the undercover expedition to northern Myanmar just went live at Global Post - please give it a read!

Ethnic Kachins Defy Myanmar's Junta

To The Future

by Peter Davison

originally published in The Atlantic



I in completing
this poem
hope at least

to outlive the journey
from a notebook page
to the freedom of

one fair copy to be handed
to a friend and then
to other friends

one of whom may
see to it that
these words are

copied or left about so that
some person who knows nothing of
me who wrote them

may notice and
take the poem as a
delight or disturbance.

May it enlist or
puzzle readers enough so
that by undertaking its traffic

they may speak its language to
multiply its effect
and by voicing both
deliver me to you.

Peter Davison (1928—2004) was The Atlantic's poetry editor for thirty years.

David Miller: Bone Truth Literature

David Miller and daughter Layla

Up this morning at 5:30. My only time to read and write. Running a Roberto Bolaño story through my speed-reader program while listening to drum and bass. Both at 200 bpm. The story is about a struggling Chilean writer (Bolaño) meeting a famous writer, only in this ethereal realm. Some call it magical realism. But it’s not magic. After enough time in Latin America you realize anything is possible like villages under siege by giant pairs of wings. It’s possible here too. This is all the Americas. It’s just that up here we clean the blood on the streets and keep our elders locked away.


But say you end up falling in love with the idea of this naked land. You go down there. Meet someone. Camp with her beside a Mexican graveyard full of paper flowers. Get married under the warm rain in Buenos Aires. Your parents flying down from Atlanta, joyful and bewildered. Mariachis arriving. People crying in the rain, saying “Dios is watching.”

wedding night in Buenos Aires

And then how quickly it moves to you just working back in the US. Getting up at 5:30 because like the young Chilean writer you think most of what’s out there is shit too. And if you could just get the beats and words to match up before sunrise and the dream-feeling goes away. Not looking in a mirror but out from it. Bee, Andrea, Mom, Dad, Brother Sam, Nana. Bolaño. Everyone there. Here. Time’s up.

- from "Twitter Novel" by David Miller

Within the next 6 months, you will read about David Miller and his real-time novel in the New Yorker, in Harpers, in the Times. His work is just too damn good and groundbreaking to stay out of the spotlight for long.

David is writing a novel in real-time on twitter.com, a micro-blogging website. This is, perhaps, one way in which literature will make the transition to the digital age.

Make no mistake - David's writing is literary. It's beautiful and intimate and real and the bone-truth.

David has been a mentor to me these past two years, even though we've only met in person twice, once in Boulder, Colorado, and once in Buenos Aires, not long after his first daughter was born.

He writes about family, faith, distance and fatherhood, and he writes one line at a time.

Here's the link to David's twitter page, where you can read the novel as it is being written.

David Miller's twitter novel

You can either start at the beginning by clicking on "older posts" or just follow the flow.

Or, you can go to this link, where David transcribes the novel with minor edits:

David Miller's novel - full version

Give David some of your time, and when his novel is featured in The New Yorker, you can say you heard about him way back when.


all photos copyright David Miller.