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Cara's Writing Services
with Cara Lopez Lee, author of They Only Eat Their Husbands, a memoir of adventure in Alaska & around the world
I was walking through a ghost town with no ghosts. Maybe that’s why it never whispered any clear answers. Ancient Akrotiri was a city of 30-thousand souls, until they vanished, every last one of them.
For years, I wasn’t a joiner. I felt socially awkward. I cherished my independence, and feared group-think. I had interests in common with some groups, but found they either took things too seriously, or not seriously enough. After years of dancing to my own drum, I’ve achieved a strong sense of self. But, recently, I’ve been running into people who dance to a beat that harmonizes with mine. At last, I’m finding my tribe. The wise council of this new tribe, is my book club.
When I tell people I’m an avid traveler, I say so with both pride and shame. Pride: because world travelers tend to be among the most environmentally conscious, culturally sensitive, socially progressive people you’ll ever meet. Shame: because, as a traveler, I cause more damage to the environment, and more disruption in the lives others, than people who stay home.
“It’s not contagious,” I repeated, as friends backed away from me in horror.
I couldn’t resist telling a travel tale involving skin-tunneling parasites. In turn, my friends couldn’t resist shifting back just a hair, although they insisted they understood there was no chance of worms leaping from my body to theirs. It didn’t help to explain that I wasn’t even sure I had schistosomiasis.
“Schi-what?”
’Tis the season of special effects glasses. This time it’s not 3-D, but HoloSpex, whatever that means. I don’t want to spend the extra dollar. A young guy leans over to me and says, “They’re totally worth it,” in the conspiratorial whisper of a pot dealer. Not that I’d know from direct experience.
While everyone else is napping, watching TV, or washing dishes this holiday weekend, let’s you and I sneak away, and continue Part 2 of our trek through China’s Tiger Leaping Gorge…
For your holiday pleasure, and my holiday break, come with me to China for a trek through one of the deepest gorges in the world. This is a 3-part journey. For parts 2 and 3, check in with me on Christmas Weekend and New Year’s Weekend, for a trip out of the house to the mountains near Tibet…
As we close in on the steaming mountain that killed some 80 people in 1968, I ask the driver, “The hotel is not this close to the volcano is it?”
“No.”
Whew.
“The hotel is closer,” he says.
