This category brings together autobiographical writing and travel as a form of fieldwork. I have spent much of my life moving through landscapes—sometimes briefly, sometimes for many months at a time—and many of the ideas explored elsewhere on this site have their origins in these encounters.
The posts here range from the usual traveler’s-yarn, to more reflective pieces about place and work. Some are about particular locations, such as New Zealand, Ukraine, or Spain; while others are concerned with the act of travelling itself, and with what prolonged exposure to unfamiliar environments reveals over time.
These essays don’t offer practical travel advice, but focus on attention: noticing landscapes, people, vegetation, and everyday practices. It’s me, trying to get my head around Time and Place – trying to figure out something about the World. Travel, in this sense, becomes a way of learning—sometimes informally, sometimes uncomfortably, but always cumulatively.
Together, these posts form an autobiographical thread running through my broader site, providing a personal context for the scientific, historical, and cultural topics explored elsewhere.