Category Archives: travel

2025 year in review

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As I look back on 2025, what stands out most is the increased flexibility in my schedule. I had more time to move freely, to travel solo, and to hear myself think. I need this quiet time to thrive, and so 2025 was a step in the right direction–with even more schedule flexibility coming around the bend.

Last spring was marked by a bumper crop of new baby Shetland lambs, in so many colors! It was a charming time to shear and sell fleeces and to watch the sheep grazing in lush green pastures. I am so grateful for my little farm, for the renewing cycles of living with livestock and for the peace that the animals bring.

Professionally, I’ll also remember that spring as simultaneously deeply successful and deeply stressful. A promotion process went sideways, and it took months to resolve (thankfully, it did resolve positively in my favor). There was also amazing book news. This is the year that I saw my first book begin to populate on all major bookselling websites. 2026 is shaping up to be another big year for reading and writing, with my first book expected to be published in spring and my second book to follow shortly thereafter in the fall. Not one, but two books in one year?!?! I have to pinch myself. It’s truly a dream come true. And there are more projects in the works too, in addition to the books. Look for more birth work, birth classes, and more writing projects from me! Although all of this takes time, years even, these projects are now well underway.

The summer was spent in pure bliss–I spent my days writing hard toward daily goals and my afternoons reading outside on the porch where the weather was perfect for months on end. The weekends were spent on tiny adventures, and, of course, more work, because I still love my work. It was hands down one of the most productive AND restorative summers I’ve ever had, and I hope to repeat that schedule in years to come.

The highlight of the fall was a solo trip to Louisiana to celebrate 10 life-changing years with my love, and that was truly a transformational trip. I felt my old self again. I felt possibilities opening up. I felt freedom and satisfaction. It was also something I hope to replicate in years to come–finally breaking away from old routines and rigid “to do” lists. To be fair, those routines and “to do” lists have also saved my life over the past seven years, so I’m grateful for those too, and they will certainly continue!

Despite neglect and precarity, in the fall my garden produced a bumper crop of pumpkins and zinnias, along with the usual jungle of colorful hollyhocks, which I love. I also traveled to San Francisco for a work conference in the fall. These conferences usually feel less like work and more like rejuvenation and inspiration too. I returned in time for the avalanche of holiday activities and “to do” lists and I felt deep gratitude for my family and this season and tried to savor the swim lessons and holiday concerts and artwork–all of those unique and fleeting hallmark moments.

The big theme in 2025 was stretching my wings a bit more than previous years allowed, and it felt so good. I felt more myself again, more room to breathe, more room to move. I am looking forward to so much more of that in the years to come. It sometimes seems counter intuitive, but I feel that I have more to give to my loved ones when I also have time to care for myself. In numerology, 2026 is a 1 year for us all and turns into a strong 2 year for me personally, which is supposed to be about connection. I look forward to it!

Rosarita by Anita Desai

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Rosarita by Anita Desai is a book for literary readers who want to spend some more mental energy in the beautiful cities of Mexico. Decades have passed now since I spent a summer traveling through Mexico on a trip with my school, but this book brought back that wonderful sense of travel–the unique sights and sounds that can only be experienced by being in Mexico, as an outsider perhaps. Readers who do not have the same connect to the country will still enjoy the prose, the rich description, and the strange emotional journey of our main character.

The Forever Colony by Victor Villanueva

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I enjoyed The Forever Colony by Victor Villanueva tremendously. The book does the work of reclamation history and offers lovely prose and theory and magical realism. I was reminded of The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling, which does something similar, imho.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

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I can admit when a book is perfect, and I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is a perfect book. While maybe I do not love this book, and while maybe this book will never be one that I recall with fondness, and while this is not typically my genre, it is one that is wholly unique and one that will stick with me forever. 

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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What a great book! As you know, I normally do not read in this genre, but Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel was exceptional. I even found myself slowing down at the end to savor the final events.

Too often I find that “sci-fi,” if you can call this “sci-fi,” lacks emotional depth, is too self aware, too clever, too focused on an overt plot. (I know sci-fi lovers will argue about this with me all day long.) But, I’ll always be impressed when an author can bring it all together in the writing–emotional depth, development, and beauty.

This is a book that examines the “simulation theory,” and the meaning in life, by jumping through eras of time. Each era is described with sparse, but powerful language. I recommend it!

The Sun in a Compass by Caroline Van Hemert

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What a gorgeous book. Caroline is a friend from grad school, and so this book has been on my radar since it came out. However, it’s publication coincided with the birth of my son, and so I’ve been delayed in reading it. I’m so glad the time has finally arrived!

This story is undeniably epic. Reading it will reacquaint you with your adventuresome spirit, no matter how modest. At the very least, you will want to get outside and go for a hike. Information about birds and migration is artfully interspersed throughout. The uniqueness of the land and animals is overlaid with insights about climate change, and it’s impact.

Caroline’s book is the antidote to the seemingly cool, unemotional adventure teams that appear to work solely from complex datasets. And mostly male. She is fully human, full of life’s most pressing questions, full of fears and doubts, and also gumption and bravery. She brings readers intimately into the complex experience of a 4,000 mile human powered trek. We learn that just like the choices we make in life, sometimes there isn’t a well established path forward, and the answer is found in weighing options, wrestling with the odds, and searching one’s own preferences.

Spare by Prince Harry

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After watching some of the recent interviews with Harry and Meghan, my curiosity was piqued to read Spare by Prince Harry. For those who have been following along, this is a great book. Fans of Princess Diana will appreciate it too. The book effectively captures his tone. It offers the kind of inside look that audiences never get access to. Prince Harry bravely takes up vulnerable and taboo topics in the book. He openly admits to his bad behavior. He openly admits to his anxiety and depression.

Where this book is a triumph is in its ability to show the royals as real, fallible, human people. Of course logically we know this, but due to tabloids, celebrities often get distilled down to products for consumption rather than treated as real people. I appreciated that about the book.

Strangely, I sort of identified with some aspects of Prince Harry’s experience. He writes about visiting the site of his mother’s death years later and mentions that its the first time he’d been to Paris, but I assumed he would have traveled to all of the world’s major cities frequently. His visit was in close proximity to my own first visit to Paris. But for me, it was more understandable. I was raised in a rural location without a lot of firsthand experience with the outside world. I could read about it, but I’d never actually, for example, walked the streets of Paris. It’s great, but it’s also a somewhat isolated experience. Prince Harry’s experience seems somewhat similar. While school and studies take up a big part of his life, another big part of his life seems to have been safely sitting alone in castles.

It’s clear that Prince Harry is traumatized by the loss of his mother at the hands of paparazzi. It’s clear that the trauma informs his own reaction to the paparazzi today, and that’s made even more evident in his drive to protect his new family. While others may say that he should ignore it, or that by recounting these baseless stories in his book, he’s just giving them more air time. There’s no accounting for a broken heart and how it will make you feel and what it will make you do.

I am sympathetic to Prince Harry, but I don’t see eye to eye with him on everything. I don’t need to. In fact, challenging the audience in these areas is probably part of what makes him so compelling. I am more sympathetic to the circumstances of the other members of the royal family. I think they’re in both a really privileged situation and a really limiting one as well. As is made clear in Spare, the royals are, again, real people with all of their own strengths and challenges, living within a limited, but also very privileged world.

Walking: One Step at a Time by Erling Kagge

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I found Walking: One Step at a Time by Erling Kagge on a list of pleasant books that help readers reconnect with nature. This was, indeed, a short and pleasant book. It lacks a plot and any overt organization, which, I have to admit bothered me a little. It bothered me in that I think it would have been improved by making overt organizational themes known throughout. The lack of (overt) organization could be considered a Scandinavian-style of prose writing, which has its benefits of course. I just thought this book was an exception. There are some great tidbits and great short narratives worth reading.

What Remains by Carole Radziwill

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What a beautiful book! What Remains by Carole Radziwill is a completely unique book, taking the reader locations you’ve never been—could never go—but also to fully human and universally recognizable places.

It’s no secret that the Real Housewives series are a guilty pleasure, and I always found Carole to be a fun, tell-it-like-it-is, type of “character,” so I thought this book might be decent, but it’s better than that!

A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love

The book takes the reader to the poor gravel roads and streams of New York state, to the haphazard suburbs, to a chaotic, but close family life, to the rush of a bold new career in a city, to war zones, to falling in love (without cliché), and forging deep friendships with “America’s royalty.” Readers see that we all ache, love, suffer, and feel the joy of the sun on our skin and the wind in our hair universally. The life she lives once she’s seriously dating and married to her husband Anthony is (emotionally) much like other everyday relationships, except with better food, clothing, apartments, travel, and lovely places to stay. The reader might be surprised to find that this group of “elites” are thoughtful, frugal, playful, stressed, sometimes uncertain. Aren’t we all?

Radziwill has lived an extraordinary life, and so while this is a memoir, and a genre with which readers might be familiar, it’s is so completely unique in the extraordinary events and circumstances she’s survived. She loses her three closest people in the span of three weeks. Maybe she has survivor’s guilt, but I hope she doesn’t. I hope she is exploring what to do with this big, bold, beautiful life she gets to live. While there is a tight and lovely metaphor about fortune threaded throughout, which works on several levels, the reader leaves the book thinking, “Anything is possible. Anything can happen. Now, what am I going to do with this big bold, beautiful life?”

I read every word and, almost to prove a point, she thanks her bff and sister-in-law, Teresa, who–get this–is from my very own La Grande, Oregon! I am reminded that it truly is a very teeny tiny microscopic world, and anything is possible.

Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner

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Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter is a beautiful book of poetry by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. I don’t usually read a lot of poetry, but this one drew me in and held me there.

The place where I work has a relatively large population of Micronesian students. In fact, a summer program for work put this book on my radar, and I’m so glad it did. I find myself wanting to learn more about this population. From the book I read about the indigenous connection to place, language, racism, climate change, climate refugees, refugees from US nuclear testing, food, love, religion, womanhood, family, and more.

I found myself searching for plane tickets. Just how far away are the Marshall Islands?