IT’S BEEN a while since I posted anything “from the editor,” and just wanted to check in for a minute with our readers.

First up, a recent stoke: The Notebook was recently recognized (along with BNT) at Blogs.com as one of 10 Great Travel Writing Blogs.

Next, a quick survey. We have a bunch of things planned here over the next few months, some of which tie into the upcoming launch of MatadorU’s Travel Photography Curriculum, and others that have to do with travel narratives.

In the meantime, I wanted to ask:

The author in Colorado Flatirons. Photo: Lau

NOCHEBUENA is the “good night” before Christmas.

Here in Argentina it’s also when Santa comes–the kids staying up until 12 when it switches to actual Navidad and a family member dressed as Santa appears pillow-stuffed and possibly wine-drunk at the door. Presents are distributed. Everyone stays up all night. This is the answer for those who ask how Argentine kids seem to have no bedtimes but can still get up and function each morning. Like most things it comes down to imagination.

Birthdays are the same. No sense in wasting good nocturnal hours. I found myself promoting this earlier in the summer on a cross-country drive from Colorado back to Georgia. My bro Will Kimzey and I had committed to “Oklahoma in the dark” a new and spontaneous manifestation of our blow-it-out-in-a-single-push road trip style. PFunk was in heavy rotation. Once the clock got to 11:55 a.m. I started watching it carefully for my surprise happy bday bust-out. You can’t miss a second.

Right now our neighbors the Colques are hacking their back yard with a gas powered weed-eater, the preferred lawn tool in Patagonia perhaps after the machete. Not having any portable stereos, they’ve been parking cars back there the last several nights, pumping cumbia beats, playing soccer, and having the inevitable water fights.

The music takes me back to a Nochebuena in Colorado, 2005. After a day of fresh pow at our local mountain, Eldo, I got back to my truck and KGNU’s Latin Christmas tunes.

Even though most of the songs were simple sons and rhumbas about things like christmas trees and eating roasted pig, something about the juxtaposition–the Rocky Mountain snow still floating down and filling in the lines I’d left in on the mountain (another pow day tomorrow), my hands and face still stinging cold, but this music on the radio that could’ve only come from someplace warm and near the ocean–all of it combined in a moment of transcendence where it felt like I could almost make out ‘where we were headed’ (towards this music). It was a moment of both ultra stoke and nonspecific loneliness, and I think there may have been a bit of sacred weeping.

It’s difficult for me to register events or contextualize emotions without there being some kind of soundtrack. Certainly iPods have stifled some of the spontaneity and chance that post snowboarding parking-lot moments like these might turn transcendent, the DJ down in the valley seeming to pick each tune in a way that helps your life push downstream a little smoother and maybe with a bit more reach and gamble and appreciation than if you’d chosen your own playlist.

But then it’s all a matter of how the day unfolds. Yesterday morning I was reading Kierkegaard’s journals and listening to Outkast at the same time, an overtly discordant pairing until the track “Unhappy” came on and Big Boi sang, “might as well have fun cuz your happiness is done when your goose is cooked.”

Layla just woke up and ran in here naked, holding two of her “babies” and asking for her morning jugo. I’m reminded again of how it works. It’s time to slice oranges. Merry Christmas.

Photo by sskennel

THERE’S NO DOUBT the world keeps getting weirder. As always, what matters is how you respond, which as Hunter S. Thompson indicated, means “going pro,” getting paid somehow to jump ass-first into the river.

This isn’t, as they say, without sacrifice, which for me has meant among other things, being away from friends and family and querencias (Southern Appalachian Mountains) during this time of year. For the past decade I was either traveling or living out West, and when November came I’d invariably look at the cloudforest or the aspens and see instead the white pines and tulip poplars (with predictable leaves-floating-down scenario) I was missing back home. In stronger moments of reflection (depression) I could actually smell smoke / hear rivers flowing.

For the first few years of exile my Jewish guilt was also cranked up in the mix. Lord I wouldn’t be there again for the Thanksgiving family roll-call! (Plus pop quiz on college / career trajectories with and bonus exam on any gadget, clothing, and vehicle purchases.)

Certainly I wasn’t thinking about the food which had taken a severe nosedive over the years (butterball), an inverse function of our family’s levels of affluence. This unfortunately is the general trend vís-à-vís time spent cooking versus the default mode of ‘ordering,’ however, it should be noted that my mom’s pumpkin bread and Momo’s gravy always delivered.

I can’t pretend that on some levels the guilt isn’t still there (‘hardwired’ as the phrase goes), or if not guilt then just a feeling of ‘damn, I wonder how everyone is.’ Is it enough then, for me to celebrate Thanksgiving like this, remembering them, writing about them, all the way down here in Patagonia?

I wonder what Uncle Rob, himself an inimitable pro (who ended up moving to Hawaii, where, now that I think of it, I could totally see a Thanksgiving feast of wild pig someday) might say. He’d probably just want to see Layla, and maybe later throw the football, as good a response as any.

In a call last night with TV producer Misty Tosh and Matador jefe Ross Borden we tried to describe that element in Matador that inspired us the most, and somehow locked onto the phrase “people breaking free,” perhaps another way to verbalize what Hunter S. Thompson was advocating.

Yesterday a family of Mapuche Indians stopped me in the street (addressing me, damnit, as Usted Señor) and asked me if I lived here. I realized that as of 3 days (long enough for me to stop pulling in on the front gate to go out) this was technically true.

I didn’t know the address they were looking for, but for a few seconds I was somehow both in the scene and watching it from somewhere else (that future place you go in your mind when you think ‘I’ll write about this?’) as the old man pointed through the rain and said he’d heard it was más p’allá.

Of course this scene shouldn’t ‘stand for’ anything more than itself, as this way of thinking has led people to do weird and evil shit (like decimate the very people who helped them survive their first seasons after arriving in the Americas, then set up a national holiday “giving thanks”) since the beginning of time. This was just one man asking another for directions as has happened and will continue to happened in stadiums and forests and bus terminals and above rapids and in muddy streets everywhere in the world forever.

Try to ‘draw out’ this direction-giving into a spiritual thing or a religion or anything else and you’ve gone from pro to amateur. Keep it at ground level and just give the man directions or smile and tell him you don’t know but you’re sure he’ll find it up there más p’allá.

Community Connection

Going back through the archives the other day I realized the Notebook has now been around just over 2 years. I think from the very beginning, helping people go pro was part of the vision. Giving people info and stories. Of course you still have to make the jump yourself.

And if you’re still at home, offer to help this year in the kitchen. Learn a recipe from your mom. Then go write about it. Happy Thanksgiving.

Yes, it was promoted to the hilt—for more than a year crammed down our throats by the likes of GM and Bank of America (whose interests may not be entirely altruistic). Yes, there are the overly-precious voiceovers, the numbingly slow trademark pans across sepia-toned still photos, the unabashed nature porn, the incessant, cloying soundtrack of fiddles and banjos.

But here, to our surprise, the writer Dayton Duncan has done a fine job pulling together the intricate and eminently dramatic story of how, against the tide, this most radical notion came to be—the idea of setting aside parts of the country as national parks, owned by We The People—for the benefit not just of Americans but of the whole world.

It’s a hell of a story. And for the following six reasons (and more) it’s one worth hearing, again and again:

1. Because “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread.” (John Muir)

2. Because “Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs all other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

3. Because “The great curse of this age and of the American people is its materialistic tendency. Money, money is the cry everywhere, until our people are held up to the world as noted for nothing except the acquisition of money at the expense of all aesthetic taste and of all love of nature.” (Senator George Vest, MO, 1883)

4. Because “Unless steps are taken by government to withhold them from the grasp of individuals, all places favorable in scenery to the recreation of the mind and body will be closed against the great body of the people.” (Frederick Law Olmsted)

5. Because “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.” (John Muir)

6. And because we may have lost track (again), somewhere along the way.

Where to see it?

Alas, the full episodes are no longer available online. But you can still see clips, deleted scenes, and untold stories at pbs. org. You can buy the whole series and other fun national parks/PBS schwag here. You can get both video and audio on iTunes, put it on your Netflix queue, or just check your local library.

Community Connection

For more Matador on parks worldwide, check David DeFranza’s Back to Nature: 13 of the World’s Richest National Parks, or Alan Velasco’s stunning Photo Essay on Glacier.

Been to a National Park lately? How are we doing? Are we living up to the dream? Share your thoughts below…

Photo: Ed Karjala

The first day of Fall and as Sarah says it brings on the ‘onslaught of cliches’ like woodsmoke and falling leaves but like anything else it all depends on where you are.

Here on the Gulf Coast of Florida there aren’t really seasons except for rainy and dry. Here it’s a game of burying any sign of things changing or growing older, much less falling or dying, as evinced by the plastic surgery places on Highway 41 and the inordinate number of old ladies on the beaches with non wobbly mega-tits.

It’s like this on so many levels. Looking out the window there’s a dude from chem-lawn hosing down the yard across the street with some foul-looking liquid.

Earlier today Layla and I went to the park where there is a section of old flatwoods and trails shaded by the oak and long-needle pine. Usually there’s nobody here and we end up exploring these trails, Layla asking for “food” when we pass the stalks of fennel, a wild edible I showed her when we first got here and which, like everything else, she hasn’t forgotten since.

Today there were some other nenas though, four little happy girls worming up the slides, and Layla wanted only to be with them even though she was shy at first only looking at them and smiling, saying “baby nena.”

Later they had to go. When you’re a parent you learn you never can just leave a place, it always takes stopping several times along the way. Layla saw them stop at the last section of playground, and said “otro parque,” which meant she wanted to go over there with them to the ‘other park.’

It made me think about Sarah’s blog the other night about the parks in Mexico, the “llanos,” and how life is lived out there in the open, a kind of transparency that I could never imagine existing here but have always wanted just the same.

Layla went over to play with the kids a few minutes more without worrying about symbolism or where we were. Another kind of transparency.

I think I’ve always loved autumn because back in Georgia where I grew up it was cooler but still warm, and usually the driest time of the year, the best for walking down to the Chattahoochee river and watching everything fall which is still another kind of transparency. Go back there with the right kind of eyes and ears and you can practice being invisible.

Summertime. Photo by Laura Bernhein

It’s been since the Spring since I’ve pumped out a From the Editor note. Far too long.

Since then we’ve had so many changes, so much progression at Matador it’s good just to stop for a second and go through some of the highlights.

That seems like an August thing to do–to soak up and savor wherever you are and whatever you’ve been doing over the last summer, to go back over it one last time before it’s back to the Fall, the school year, another transition.

Here are a few highlights, in no particular order:

* The Traveler’s Notebook migrated all topics (travel jobs, travel advice) to other blogs in the Matador Network , and began focusing exclusively on publishing travel narratives, notes, and journal excerpts, as well as articles on travel writing, photography, and video.

* Brave New Traveler broke 4,000 RSS subscribers.

* The Matador Network began consistently reaching nearly 800,000 unique visitors per month.

* Matador Community members began winning some great awards, such as Jenny Williams winning the StorySouth Award 2009 , Craig and Linda Martin winning Lonely Planet’s award for Best Travel Podcast.

* Various Matador members have published books. This includes, among several others, Beebe Bahrami, whose book, The Spiritual Traveler Spain–The Guide to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes, was published in May 2009, and Nora Dunn, whose book 10,000 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget, was also published this May. Other Matadorians are just about to publish books, such as James Workman whose work, Heart of Dryness is already receiving advanced praise from literary giants such as Rick Bass and David James Duncan.

* Matador launched its newest blog, Matador Sports.

* In probably the biggest news of all, we’ve spent the last 7 months working on Matador’s first educational component, MatadorU. The first course offered at MatadorU will be a Travel Writing School unlike anything else on the web or in print, a true step by step guide that lays out exactly how to become a professional Travel Writer.

Happy final weeks of summer to everyone at Matador.

David Miller

8/07/09, Atlanta

Layla. Champion rock thrower. Photo Laura Bernhein

1. Over the weekend my bro Segundo left a message on my phone where he sang this passover song Dayenu.

Segundo is not Jewish but half-Italian which is close. He’s also really good at imitations which is all you need when it comes to songs and ceremonies, especially ones for which you feel a slightly whimsical if misunderstood ‘fondness’.

2. How this all figures into a week’s ’roundup’ of the Notebook I’m not sure. I just got the sense when I woke up last Thursday that millions of dining and living rooms across the world were about to get hit up with new remixes of the story of how Moses parted the Red Sea. And that that counted for something–not the Red Sea part so much but the re-telling.

3. Yesterday I was walking with Layla through Ravenna park in Seattle. There was some kind of Easter race / scavenger hunt going on involving the local hipster / tight pants / fixie bike crowd. The racers skidded down the hill, dropped their bikes, then had to fish a can of PBR out of this reeking, algal-skinned pond. The kid taking pictures told me it was to represent how “Jesus was a fisherman.”

4. This all made me feel somewhat ‘proud’ of Seattle.

5. Last week I published a piece by David Johnson. Afterward he wrote me back saying:

“sort of blows me away to think that that many people saw a bunch of lines I drew when I was going out of my head in Rio. . . anyways, still going out of my head. Now in San Luis Obispo. Surfed Montana de Oro this morning.”

6. That’s one of the ceremonies he and I have had going since we were kids in Georgia: basically stoking out on whatever the next set of views are or might be and considering each new stage to be part of some progression even though you always end up feeling the same.

6. Layla looked up at the kids pushing at the beer cans with long sticks. She was only mildly interested. She was busy with her own ceremony: throwing rocks in the water. I picked up some more and handed them to her.

Layla in Seattle Arboretum. Photo: Laura Bernhein.

Indie Travel Podcast

Congrats to longtime Matador contributors Craig and Linda Martin for their winning the Lonely Planet’s award for best travel podcast. If you haven’t yet, make sure you subscribe to their podcast.. Craig has produced several podcasts for the Notebook as well. You can find them here.

Notes from the Road

Also wanted to thank everyone who has been submitting their notes from the road. We’ve been getting lots of great stories. In general, most have been rejected not because the writing isn’t ‘good’ but because it doesn’t seem like a ‘note’. Those that have been selected seem to have a few things in common:

• Total lack of any kind of ‘judgment’.
• A focus on ‘concrete’ language.
• Short paragraphs, words, sentences, overall length.
• A narrator who isn’t looking for ‘universal truths’ but just traveling and observing things as they come.

Please keep writing and sending everyone. We could be publishing your note next.

Travel and Adventure Jobs

In the weeks ahead we’ll be bringing back one of our favorite series: travel and adventure jobs. Please note: we’re currently soliciting submissions .

Happy Spring everyone. Here in Seattle the Cherry Blossoms are going off and there’s still color in the sky at 8:00 pm.

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Editor David Miller with assistant wave-checker, Layla.

Greetings mundo,

Stoke levels are super high across Matador tonight as we’ve just launched a new theme for the entire network. This coincides with a whole new crew of contributing editors, including Teresa Ponikvar , who will be joining me here at the Notebook to bring you the fresh.

Now seems like a good time to reflect. Here’s a brief history:

The Traveler’s Notebook launched as Matador’s first ‘network’ site in back in September 2007. We joined forces with Brave New Traveler at the end of January of 2008. From there our network has evolved into what it is today: 9 sites interconnected through the Matador Community and covering everything travel, culture, and place.

Our original vision for the notebook had two parts:

• To find local experts willing to line out the exact who-what-where-when-why and how of travel. Like How To Travel By Cargo Ship, or How to Convert your Truck to Run on Veggie Oil.
• To offer advice on becoming a better writer, photographer, filmmaker.

That’s still still our mission today, and even after almost 2 years, it still feels like we’re only in the early stages. There are way more waves out there.

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