Grand Prize Gold Winner: The Weight of Paradise
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
1y ago
By Cherene Sherrard It takes time to find comfort in the swells of both culture and sea. Given the picture-perfect day, the narrow Oahu beach was peculiarly empty. A pair of newlyweds had the entire panorama as backdrop for their wedding photos. Far from shore, streaks of cirrus clouds formed a cross in a cobalt sky that met the white foam of the break. The rainbow arcs of parasails spun their stick figure riders like marionettes. The water was the aqua blue of my dreams, but I couldn’t enjoy it. Turning away from the waves, I kept my eyes fixed on the bride and groom as they cycled through pr ..read more
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Grand Prize Silver Winner: Ambush on the Cumberland Plateau
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
1y ago
By Brian Reisinger A hunting trip in America’s original colonial backwoods was supposed to be full of lessons for his 12-year-old nephew. We were deep in rural Tennessee when the rain came. It was light and so quick that the sun was still out, and it danced in the sunlight as we drove on, coming and going. It was hard to tell whether the rain was just starting and stopping, or whether we were traveling through different pockets of a land with secrets. That land was the historic Cumberland Plateau, and we had come to this high wooded country to hunt wild hogs. “Almost there buddy,” I said to my ..read more
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Journeys with an Amazonian Shaman
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
2y ago
By Johnny Motley Men’s Travel Gold Winner in the Sixteenth Annual Solas Awards Further proof that lives can change in an instant. On the sixth day aboard an Amazonian cargo ship, I spied the faint outline of São Gabriel da Cachoeira from the aft deck. Located deep in the Upper Amazon, São Gabriel held the title of “Most Indigenous City in Brazil,” although “city” was a misnomer: São Gabriel was little more than a village that had sprung up around a Brazilian military base, an outpost intended to secure the nebulous borders between Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. Peering into the corroded mirr ..read more
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Grand Prize Gold Winner: Boots Bilong Mi
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
2y ago
By Patrick Ritter On a dugout canoe trip through the interior of New Guinea, how far would you go for a pair of shoes? I heard a splash behind me and I froze midstroke. Sounded close. I twisted around to see a large tree crashing into the water. The Sepik River winds across the swamplands of Papua New Guinea like a massive snake, its diet trees and eroded silt. The tree shuddered in the current. From the branches startled kingfishers escaped into flight, screeching. I glanced to Randy, my buddy from California, at the front of the dugout canoe. His face was sunburned and questioning. “No,” I s ..read more
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Lifer
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
3y ago
By Lisa Boice Animal Encounter Gold Winner in the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards “The life list of a birdwatcher is of a different order. It’s not what you cross off that counts, but what you add.” —Terry Tempest Williams The black sky was like a drop cloth over the prairie grass and the only thing we could see were the bugs darting in and out of the light from our car’s headlights. We were only 60 miles west from Houston in Eagle Lake, Texas, but the big city felt a lifetime away. I turned my neck to see behind us and the brightness of the headlight beams from another car made me wince. My hus ..read more
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Why I Love Baboons
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
3y ago
By Lynn Brindell Adventure Travel Gold Winner in the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards I think Beatus did it because he felt guilty. Or because he thought we’d give him a bigger tip. He’d gently rustled our tent flap that morning, the bright slit of light slicing through dark green shadows. “Good morning!” he softly called. “Game drive now!” We, The Newlyweds, usually slept in. But on our last day in Africa we left camp early, bundled against the mist and chill, our jeep the first to growl out and bounce along the rutted, mud way that passed for a road. I leaned into Rob, cold air rushing against ..read more
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Grand Prize Bronze Winner (tie): Laura – Lady of the Mexican Nights
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
3y ago
By Edward Stanton You wanted to get farther away from home, beyond the border and Baja California, deeper into the country.  The city of Saltillo lay on a slope of the Sierra Madre Oriental, just north of the central plateau, about 5,000 feet high.  There you found a boardinghouse with a courtyard on Calle Xicoténcatl of sacred memory. Your room opened onto the light-filled patio with a gurgling well, shade trees, cracked flower pots, a colossal zaguán or foyer with a carved wooden door.  The courtyard was the hub of life for everyone in the house: the landlords Don Alfonso and ..read more
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Grand Prize Bronze Winner (tie): Marriage, Dubois Style
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
3y ago
By Colette O’Connor “Just add three letters to Paris and you have paradise.” —Jules Renard The family Dubois of Avenue Foch are French. That is to say, the family Dubois are different. In an age when nearly half of American marriages collapse, often in smoking heaps of anger, bitterness, pain, I often wondered, what does it take? Really, what does it take – to keep it together, if not forever, at least through thick and thin? So when I met the family Dubois of Paris’s Avenue Foch, I thought, Ah! A chance to understand how it’s done. I thought, Oh! If Tolstoy’s “happy families are all alike” id ..read more
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Grand Prize Silver Winner: The House Within
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
3y ago
By Jacob Kemp What does it mean to shelter in place? When I turned twenty-one, I spent the better part of a year in an attic, hiding from Nazis. The calendar read 2011. I had just graduated from college. I was offered a role in The Diary of Anne Frank, to play Peter Van Dann. So I packed a suitcase, a carry-on, my winter coat, and left New York only weeks after I arrived—for Amsterdam, 1942. The actress playing Anne was a rising star in Chicago theater. A year later she’d be in a superhero movie, a blockbuster based on a comic-book. Onstage, she was a marvel. Scenes together, despite the long ..read more
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Grand Prize Gold Winner: Headlights
Best Travel Writing Blog
by Larry Habegger
3y ago
By Marcia DeSanctis There was danger, even in the presence of angels. February is not the ideal time for a road trip to northern France, but the moodiness of the sea, wind, and sky appeals to a certain breed of loner like me, drawn to the echoing voids of the off-season. Coastal Normandy is famous for its dramatic weather, and in winter, it grows wilder still, with thrashing winds and squalls of frozen sleet that churn up from the English Channel. The region is a sweep of battlegrounds and fortified castles, stone-cold Norman abbeys, and craggy ports that have hosted centuries of departing and ..read more
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