Introduction:

‘Heading West’  (pulled from the very bottom of a battered blue trunk), is a detailed account of a train trip across Canada in July 1974. The journey was neither taken for tourism nor for adventure but in expectation of a new beginning.  However hesitant to expose the writing of a vulnerable 22-year-old, I post it in the hope that its theme might resonate with someone who has also ‘emigrated’ within his/her own borders.  

‘On the Gringo Trail’ is excerpted from  extensive notes taken in travels through Central and South America in 1975-1976. That journey was effectively the political awakening which sparked a  desire to spend longer periods in the developing world. 

‘Back from Nigeria‘ (1979) and ‘Back from Tanzania’ (1981) chronicle transitions back to the north after lengthy absences. Travails of re-entry are detailed in the final segment.

The photos interspersed with the text are sometimes fuzzy and dark–– perhaps in keeping with the memories themselves. In any case, there is marginal improvement in my graduation from a Kodak 110 instamatic in the late 1970s to an Olympus Trip 35 mm. in the early 1980s. Due to a self-righteous disdain for conventional tourism in my earlier South American travels, there are no photos accompanying ‘On the Gringo Trail.’

I make no claims of literary merit in these travelogues: only that circumstances of departure and arrival that bookended these travels were unusual and possibly interesting. Of course, that determination is not mine to make…

-lefthook51 (FWT)

January 2020

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