Root or fruit: a meaningful approach to living

A year after the Glass Fire torched Bothe Napa Valley State Park, I returned. Though patches of green had already reappeared; little yellow flowers poked through tangles of branches, I had to actively focus on the regrowth rather than the scarred trees. Now two years since that devastating fire, I came back. While the fire’s impact cannot be ignored — the burn scars on Douglas firs, bark stripped off madrone and oaks, some trees completely incinerated — now the green was more prominent than the scars.

Even though many claimed 2022 was a mellow wildfire year in the American West, 2022 has still burned many of us.

Covid, death, illness, transitions, rejection, loss of rights, environmental destruction, wars, and an intense White Lotus season fried our nervous systems. Not sure about you, I was still trying to decompress from the collective traumas of 2020 and 2021 when 2022 made me its bitch.

In addition to trying to figure out how to live in what’s increasingly feeling like the apocalypse, I’ve been in a deep state of reckoning with the role of travel in my life. Travel has been my identity since I was a teenager. When I needed to heal, escape, grow, I simply got on a plane and wandered toward inspiration.

As a professional travel journalist, it’s also my job.