Speaker 1: Pushkin. The other week, I was being pre interviewed for
Speaker 1: a chat with podcast Playlist with Leah Simone Bowen, a
Speaker 1: CBC show that features yes podcasts, and a pre interview
Speaker 1: is what some sophisticated shows do. They talk with a
Speaker 1: guest before they record the conversation, so everyone has an
Speaker 1: idea of what's going on. You will not be surprised
Speaker 1: to learn that we don't conduct pre interviews here on
Speaker 1: not Lost Chat. So I was being pre interviewed and
Speaker 1: the producer asked me who my favorite travel writers were,
Speaker 1: and my mind went completely blank. The name Nabokov jumped
Speaker 1: in my head, but as far as I know, he
Speaker 1: never really wrote about travel. And then I found myself saying, MFK. Fisher,
Speaker 1: but she was a food writer who did write about
Speaker 1: France and California, but not really on the nose. Then
Speaker 1: said something like, well, I don't really distinguish between what
Speaker 1: types of things people write about. I just have favorite
Speaker 1: writers something Millie Mouth like that, and for a moment
Speaker 1: I realized how hard it is to be on the
Speaker 1: other side of questions. It's funny when I interview someone,
Speaker 1: I often think they just have to answer questions. They
Speaker 1: don't have to think of questions, they don't have to
Speaker 1: fake laugh that it's much easier on that side. But
Speaker 1: that actually isn't really the case, and this pre interview
Speaker 1: reminded me of that. So I lumbered through it all
Speaker 1: and at the end the producer said something sassy like, well,
Speaker 1: at least now you have an idea of what you're
Speaker 1: going to be asked when we're conducting the interview, or
Speaker 1: something like that. Then later in the day, as I
Speaker 1: was coming home from work, walking through the park that
Speaker 1: separates my apartment from the subway, a book title popped
Speaker 1: into my head. Black Lamb and Gray Falcon by Rebecca West.
Speaker 1: This book which was written in nineteen thirty seven, when
Speaker 1: Europe was descending into war and terror. It's this hulking
Speaker 1: book about the former Yugoslavia, a place I've spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in, and the addition I have is
Speaker 1: one thousand, one hundred and fifty pages long. It's the
Speaker 1: size of a cornerstone of a mausoleum, which is appropriate
Speaker 1: because you will kill yourself if you lug it around
Speaker 1: on your travel for weeks on end, as I have.
Speaker 1: If you were to drop it on your foot, you
Speaker 1: would break your foot and lose any deposit you had
Speaker 1: on your Airbnb. It's a real backbreaker. It is considered
Speaker 1: rightly one of the best travel logs ever written. Rebecca
Speaker 1: West herself was a towering journalist and cultural critic who
Speaker 1: is also known for covering the Norremberg Trials for The
Speaker 1: New Yorker and her type of writing in this book,
Speaker 1: which it wasn't just a personal journey she traveled with
Speaker 1: her husband, It wasn't just a dry history, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just for portage, but it was her applying her prodigious
Speaker 1: mind as she moved through this foreign land, trying to
Speaker 1: understand something about human beings. And as it would turn out,
Speaker 1: it became a document that gave just insight into this
Speaker 1: moment in Europe before everything changed. So as pleased with myself,
Speaker 1: I was like, great, when i sit for the actual
Speaker 1: interview with podcast playlist, I'm going to name drop this
Speaker 1: fantastic author, hit people to this cool book which maybe
Speaker 1: they haven't heard of, helped raise the profile of this
Speaker 1: wonderful author. And then when I sat down for the show,
Speaker 1: I was never asked the question. I was asked about
Speaker 1: the favorite places I visited. I was asked about Eddison Greer.
Speaker 1: All perfectly fine, pleasant conversation, honored to be on the show,
Speaker 1: but I felt like I was a suitor left holding
Speaker 1: a bouquet of flowers behind my back with no opportunity
Speaker 1: to present them until now Rebecca West, Ladies and gentlemen investigate.
Speaker 1: And if she was alive today, I would have her
Speaker 1: on this series, but she's not so Instead, this week
Speaker 1: I've invited another fantastic female travel writer on the show,
Speaker 1: Sheryl Straight, who walked one thousand miles up the Pacific
Speaker 1: Coast Trail and wrote a book called Wild. We'll have
Speaker 1: a conversation with her and then she'll also her etiquette
Speaker 1: questions when Not Lost gets back. Welcome back to Not
Speaker 1: Lost Chat, my series of conversations with fellow travelers. I'm
Speaker 1: Brendan Francis, Newnham, and today I am talking with author
Speaker 1: Cheryl Strade and conveniently for us, for me, Chryl's creative
Speaker 1: life can be organized into two distinct categories that happened
Speaker 1: to perfectly align with this show. The first is life advisor.
Speaker 1: Charles spent years as an advice calumnist for online literary
Speaker 1: magazine The Rumpus, where she answered questions anonymously in a
Speaker 1: column called Deer Sugar, and then in twenty twelve, she
Speaker 1: compiled some of her advice into a book of essays
Speaker 1: called Tiny Beautiful Things, which became a bestseller and is
Speaker 1: now being adapted into a TV show for Hulu. So
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say is Cheryl is a ringer
Speaker 1: for our travel etiquette segment, which will be coming up
Speaker 1: later in the show. But the main reason I wanted
Speaker 1: to speak with Cheryl is because of her other creative identity,
Speaker 1: that of travel memoirist. I think that's a word. A
Speaker 1: few months before she published that collection of essays, she
Speaker 1: published a book called Wild, which is about a year
Speaker 1: in her early twenties when charl lost her mother to
Speaker 1: lung cancer, divorced her first husband, started using heroin, and
Speaker 1: then to get away from it all, she decides to
Speaker 1: hike more than a thousand miles alone on the Pacific
Speaker 1: Coast Trail. It makes the premise of not Last Season
Speaker 1: one Like You Know, Elmo Travels Across Town Why became
Speaker 1: a huge bestseller and a hit movie starring Reese Witherspoon,
Speaker 1: and hiking the PCT and writing about it was a
Speaker 1: journey of self discovery for chryl. So the first thing
Speaker 1: I asked her when I met up with her was,
Speaker 1: why do some of us have this impulse to just
Speaker 1: start moving when big things happen to us. It's such
Speaker 1: a great question. There are so many layers of answers
Speaker 1: that I have to it. I think the first one
Speaker 1: is just a very sometimes a very simple and kind
Speaker 1: of surface impulse, which is to flee, to say, I
Speaker 1: need to escape this, this sorrow or this situation or
Speaker 1: this scene that I associate with things that hurt me.
Speaker 1: I need to get out of here, get out of dodge,
Speaker 1: as they say, right, we know that like when we
Speaker 1: go venture out to parts unknown and to places that
Speaker 1: maybe we feel kind of like an outsider or that
Speaker 1: feel foreign to us, or we feel challenged in some
Speaker 1: way because we aren't at home, we aren't in the
Speaker 1: comfort zone. We know that in those plays we're going
Speaker 1: to get what we most need at those moments where
Speaker 1: we feel lost or traumatized or adrift, and that is
Speaker 1: a deeper understanding of who we are and what the
Speaker 1: world is in our place in it. You know, when
Speaker 1: we step outside that comfort zone literally, which we do
Speaker 1: every time we travel, we have an opportunity to see
Speaker 1: ourselves more clearly and the world more deeply. And do
Speaker 1: you think that comes from Is it that we are
Speaker 1: away from our kind of patterns and the culture that
Speaker 1: has defined us, or is it also we're away from
Speaker 1: other people who kind of know us and have a
Speaker 1: certain framework for processing us. I think it's both. You know,
Speaker 1: the pattern thing is real. A pattern is essentially a habit,
Speaker 1: and travel shakes us out of that literally from everything
Speaker 1: from very often the food we eat, to the landscape
Speaker 1: we see when we look out the window or when
Speaker 1: we go on a hike, to in the case of
Speaker 1: foreign travel, even the language that we hear. Right, it's
Speaker 1: just everything is different and it has a way of
Speaker 1: waking us up because we have been broken out of
Speaker 1: that pattern. But I think something you say about being
Speaker 1: different too because you're away from the people who know
Speaker 1: you is really powerful as well, because, of course the
Speaker 1: people who know you, they're wonderful people. They love you,
Speaker 1: and very often some of them, but we are very
Speaker 1: often we rely on them to actually to know us,
Speaker 1: to be known as a wonderful feeling. It makes us
Speaker 1: feel secure and treasured and yes, sometimes awful. But you know. Generally,
Speaker 1: the people we know make us feel known, right, and
Speaker 1: that's a good feeling, but that can also turn, you know,
Speaker 1: on itself, and we realize that sometimes the people we
Speaker 1: know are the people who have in some ways defined
Speaker 1: us in ways that we no longer find accurate, or
Speaker 1: sometimes that we even no longer want to be accurate.
Speaker 1: For example, when I went alone on my Pacific Crest
Speaker 1: Trail hike in the summer of nineteen ninety five, part
Speaker 1: of it was getting away from this sort of group
Speaker 1: of twenty somethings i'd sort of been hanging out with.
Speaker 1: And I don't blame them for any of the self
Speaker 1: destructive behavior I was doing at that time, drinking too much,
Speaker 1: being wildly promiscuous, using heroin, you know, I don't put
Speaker 1: any of that on the people I was around. And
Speaker 1: yet those people were doing those things with me, and
Speaker 1: they saw me as part of them, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this isn't me, you know, this is not my life.
Speaker 1: And part of my decision to adventure away and go
Speaker 1: hike on the PCT was just saying like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be different. I'm gonna put myself in different company. Now,
Speaker 1: the company I put myself in was my own in
Speaker 1: the wilderness. Yeah, but you know, a similar thing can happen.
Speaker 1: If I had had more money, I just would have
Speaker 1: gone to Paris or something. So you hiked the trail
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five when you were twenty seven, and
Speaker 1: you published your memoir some years later when you're forty three.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering which was more of a demarcation point in
Speaker 1: your life, the hike or writing the book and having
Speaker 1: it be published. Well, without question, the hike, you know,
Speaker 1: in my life was the demarcation point, you know. I
Speaker 1: began the trail honestly, really really at the lowest point
Speaker 1: in my life, really just feeling like what is my
Speaker 1: purpose and who have I become? And what is my meaning?
Speaker 1: And I didn't remember how strong I was. I didn't
Speaker 1: remember how brave I was. I didn't know how I
Speaker 1: was going to make good on my dreams of becoming
Speaker 1: a writer, you know. And on the course of that trip,
Speaker 1: as I walked step by step, I sort of taught
Speaker 1: myself the answers to all those questions. I taught myself, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you are strong, and not because you're like, you know,
Speaker 1: so victorious or grand or triumphant, it's because you decide
Speaker 1: to keep going step by step even when it hurts.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, when I got back finished my hike,
Speaker 1: I then you know, went onward in my life in
Speaker 1: a way that was different. And of course writing the
Speaker 1: book was really powerful because it was like I got
Speaker 1: to look back and essentially like I had to you know,
Speaker 1: I had to tell the story and find the meaning
Speaker 1: in the story, the meaning that wasn't just about my life,
Speaker 1: but about what it means to be human. And so
Speaker 1: of course that was also a very emotional journey. You know,
Speaker 1: I learned a lot, but it didn't change my life
Speaker 1: in the way that the hike itself did. Am I
Speaker 1: missing out? Like there was an era where I did
Speaker 1: some I worked at Elisa National Park, I did do
Speaker 1: some out back hiking. I did encounter a bear, but
Speaker 1: I'm kind of good with that. Like like I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to look at the stars in the desert,
Speaker 1: but then I like would like a martini at the
Speaker 1: palms in so I can be missing out of some
Speaker 1: fundamental life moments if I just kind of skip out
Speaker 1: on the great outdoors from here. Yes, yes, damn yes
Speaker 1: you are. I mean, though I have to say it
Speaker 1: like I feel, I feel for you because I'm really
Speaker 1: glad I did it when I was young, because it's
Speaker 1: a lot easier. I mean, that's what That's what I've
Speaker 1: amazed as me, Brendan. I'd like look back at that
Speaker 1: t and I'm like, I slept every night, you know,
Speaker 1: on the ground, just on the hard ground, right, you know.
Speaker 1: Now it's like, Okay, I got to have a tech
Speaker 1: repedic bed and like four pillows in the suit of
Speaker 1: a certain arrangement and a sleep mask. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just amazing how rough and tumble I was. But but
Speaker 1: here's the deal with that. And I think that this
Speaker 1: is a larger truth about travel is that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's doing what I did and sleeping in the
Speaker 1: dirt in the wilderness for days on end, and really
Speaker 1: being in a situation where you know, there were no
Speaker 1: luxuries at all. The extreme, you know, let's put it
Speaker 1: this way. When I would when I would come to
Speaker 1: you know, those those campgrounds in the woods where there's
Speaker 1: like an out house. If I came to a campground
Speaker 1: that had an outhouse like which in normal life most
Speaker 1: people are really repulsed by, I felt like I was
Speaker 1: like the Queen of England because I got to actually sit,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of squatting in the dirt, which I
Speaker 1: normally did. But you know, I think that that being
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable almost always is a really great teacher for us.
Speaker 1: The times that we have to endure, the times that
Speaker 1: we have to suffer, the times that we have to
Speaker 1: keep going even when it hurts, those are the times
Speaker 1: that build us and that make us that I think
Speaker 1: deep in any trip, and of course, you know, my
Speaker 1: hike in the PCT was one end of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: like quite quite difficult, but even just little things like
Speaker 1: last summer, my husband and I we went to Europe
Speaker 1: for seven weeks and we had this whole trip like
Speaker 1: planned from France to Wales to Greece to you know,
Speaker 1: all through all through central Europe and you know, up
Speaker 1: the Danube and all of these things. We were doing
Speaker 1: all these things, and our bags never made it with
Speaker 1: us and we got COVID. So it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this isn't fun, this is hard, and we are uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and in a foreign place. And it reminded me of
Speaker 1: some of those lessons I learned on the PCT, that
Speaker 1: those are the things that sometimes make the trip more interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe I shouldn't say this as the host
Speaker 1: of a travel show, but it's also you can just
Speaker 1: live in New York. You can endure great difficulty every
Speaker 1: day and see the worst of humanity and still you know,
Speaker 1: get stronger hopefully. Question Mark. Absolutely, you know, I think
Speaker 1: that there is no city more like the wilderness the
Speaker 1: New York City. I remember very clearly feeling that way
Speaker 1: about it. You know, every time I go to New
Speaker 1: York City, it's like, this is like the wilderness because
Speaker 1: it's just so it's everything. It's it's everything, and you're
Speaker 1: both very connected and very alone, just like you are
Speaker 1: on the wilderness. Um so, so yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 1: wild You. Then, you know your book Tiny Beautiful Things,
Speaker 1: your column Dear Sugar, which you now do a sub
Speaker 1: stack called Deer Sugar. It's now Tiny Beautiful Things, which
Speaker 1: is a collection from some of the early days of
Speaker 1: your advice column, is now being turned into a TV show.
Speaker 1: And just read Sorrying Catherine Han like, holy cow, yes,
Speaker 1: would could you picked the better person? That's incredible? Well,
Speaker 1: my question is do people ever ask you questions about
Speaker 1: journeys or traveling? Oh that as you do this in
Speaker 1: all sorts of forms. That's interesting. You know. In the
Speaker 1: in the intervening years, Steve Almond den I had a
Speaker 1: podcast called Deer Sugars and it's an advice podcast. People
Speaker 1: wrote us letters and one thing that came up very often,
Speaker 1: I mean more than you would gas around it. It's
Speaker 1: like people are really conflicted about, um, location, like should
Speaker 1: I move. There was this one woman I'll never forget
Speaker 1: on the podcast. She went to Paris and met some
Speaker 1: like fabulous man and she was like, we fell in
Speaker 1: love and to Paris and be with him. And I
Speaker 1: was like, of course you should. And Steve was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, be careful in this and that. The other
Speaker 1: thing I'm like, I'm like, no, go, go go, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, I remember to a letter from somebody who
Speaker 1: met some hot Italian young man on the beach and
Speaker 1: data fling and I don't remember what she was asking
Speaker 1: about it, but I was always like, I'm always on
Speaker 1: the side of taking risks that involve venturing out, you know,
Speaker 1: And I do think that it is something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people grapple with. And another thing that I
Speaker 1: know has come up for people sometimes is like you know,
Speaker 1: is travel a good investment. Is this a good way
Speaker 1: to spend your money? Or should you be practical? Like
Speaker 1: I could put you know, ten thousand dollars in this
Speaker 1: savings account that I will have in my retirement, or
Speaker 1: I can take ten thousand dollars you know, to Kenya
Speaker 1: and I'll just tell you I've always been the person
Speaker 1: who will say go to Kenya. Definitely, absolutely definite. I
Speaker 1: feel like as I when I was younger, you know,
Speaker 1: corrupted by you know, Jack Carowake, etc. I was running
Speaker 1: around the Gamaniac. But now as I'm older, it's even
Speaker 1: more I'm feeling more urgency to see everything I can
Speaker 1: and and kind of not not because I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm going to miss out, but because I just know
Speaker 1: that I want to experience all, you know, all the things,
Speaker 1: and that our time is a little more limited than
Speaker 1: maybe we think when we're in our twenties. I see
Speaker 1: it the same way like I can tell that you're
Speaker 1: really a kindred spirit when it comes to this way
Speaker 1: of thinking, is I do I actually do think of
Speaker 1: it as an investment, you know that, like travel has
Speaker 1: really improved, like it's it's improved my well being. I
Speaker 1: think I'm a better writer because of travel. I think
Speaker 1: I'm a better person because of travel. I think I'm
Speaker 1: a better parent because of travel. And you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like just like vacation. You know, usually it's
Speaker 1: about having some kind of adventure or having some kind
Speaker 1: of going on a journey that's about something deeper than
Speaker 1: just seeing the sights and and I believe in that
Speaker 1: something that maybe everyone knows and thinks about this with you,
Speaker 1: but I didn't realize until I was revisiting your work.
Speaker 1: And forgive me for being such a ding that, but
Speaker 1: um strayed is your You chose that name, that's right,
Speaker 1: which to me, like again, for maybe there's even people
Speaker 1: encounter you with tiny beautiful things and just assume that
Speaker 1: your god given name. Can you remind us why you
Speaker 1: chose it? Yeah? So I was born Cheryl Nyland. My
Speaker 1: father's last name was Nyland, and that's what I was
Speaker 1: as a kid. And I got married just like scandalously young,
Speaker 1: no regrets in terms of like, I absolutely loved my
Speaker 1: first husband, so that was good. But you know, we
Speaker 1: were just young in love and you know, for reasons
Speaker 1: that are really crazy and useful, we decided to get married.
Speaker 1: We should have just fitting each other's boyfriend and girlfriend.
Speaker 1: But we decided to get married and we took on
Speaker 1: each other's names because we were like, we're going to
Speaker 1: be really feminist about it, and I'm going to take
Speaker 1: on your name, and you're gonna take a mine, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna have this really long name that was Nyland
Speaker 1: litig Well. And so when we got divorced, when I
Speaker 1: was like twenty five, I knew that I didn't want
Speaker 1: to go back to being Cheryl n Island. I was
Speaker 1: estranged for my dad since I was a young child.
Speaker 1: He was, you know, not a great dad. He was
Speaker 1: abusive and just not a good force in my life.
Speaker 1: And I knew I couldn't drag around this long hyphenated
Speaker 1: name from my marriage. And of course I'm a writer,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm somebody who thinks a lot about words
Speaker 1: and a lot about language. And so, and my mom
Speaker 1: was dead. I was really an orphan. I didn't have
Speaker 1: a father, I didn't have a mother, I didn't have
Speaker 1: really anything except my own life. And I knew that
Speaker 1: I needed to move into this new life with a
Speaker 1: word that would be that would become mine, that would
Speaker 1: be become my true name. I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking about it wasn't just some sort of spontaneous thing.
Speaker 1: I really thought about different words that might define or
Speaker 1: communicate to myself in the world who I was. And
Speaker 1: I came upon this word strade, and I loved the
Speaker 1: meaning of it. You know, it really is somebody who
Speaker 1: who moves through the world, motherless and fatherless, somebody who
Speaker 1: strays off the regular path and finds their way. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people hear that word straight and
Speaker 1: they think like, I was somebody who's lost, And for me,
Speaker 1: I think it's really somebody who sort of has to
Speaker 1: blaze their own trail. And when my husband and I
Speaker 1: got divorced, just on the divorce paperwork, you could write
Speaker 1: in this form my name after this divorce will be
Speaker 1: and I just wrote Cheryl Straight, and that's who I,
Speaker 1: you know, became. And what's so funny and interesting to me, Brendon,
Speaker 1: as so many people who ask about the name, We're like, well, Straight,
Speaker 1: isn't your real name? And it's like it is. It's
Speaker 1: It's the realist name I've ever had, you know, Like
Speaker 1: when women get married and take on their husband's name,
Speaker 1: like nobody says like, well, that's not your real name. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I particularly like how the words strayed, you know. I
Speaker 1: think initially the connotation people think, yeah, something like a
Speaker 1: stray cat, it's something abandoned, But there's a much broader
Speaker 1: definition about someone who kind of goes off the beaten path,
Speaker 1: fears away. And I like how you own that and
Speaker 1: then by the force of your success, that word is
Speaker 1: in every bookstore. You know, it's one movie screen, you know,
Speaker 1: like you you really you took it and made it
Speaker 1: your own. Love that my name is a sentence. I
Speaker 1: love that. I love that. I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: think about what my name would be if I were
Speaker 1: to name myself, it would probably be something like Brendan Knapps,
Speaker 1: Brendan Snacks. I'm gonna I'm gonna need to workshop it.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we're gonna take a quick break. But
Speaker 1: when I come back, hopefully you will help me answer
Speaker 1: some travel questions. Stick around. Welcome back to Not Lost
Speaker 1: Chat Today. My guest is writer Chryl Straight and Chryl
Speaker 1: on this show, like my old show, which you also visited,
Speaker 1: we solicit etiquette questions, travel etiquette questions, and when I
Speaker 1: initially decided to talk with you, I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: ask you to answer questions, but when people found out
Speaker 1: I was talking with you, they immediately started giving me questions.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to run some of these value if
Speaker 1: that's okay, okay real? I mean, yeah, I'm an advice columnist.
Speaker 1: You know you are, no, I know, but I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's like the comedian at dinner and
Speaker 1: you're like, be funny. All right. So I have a
Speaker 1: few questions from in house here at pushkin them out.
Speaker 1: This first one I really I like, and I'm meager
Speaker 1: to hear your answer. The question comes from Jordan, and
Speaker 1: Jordan writes, how do you know in a moment you
Speaker 1: experience in your travels is worth writing down? What's different
Speaker 1: about it that makes it worth remembering? Well, I think
Speaker 1: there's a They're really a couple stages to writing, and
Speaker 1: the first one is I think you should write everything down.
Speaker 1: I think you should write down everything you're thinking and feeling,
Speaker 1: and the small things, the little gestures, the person sitting
Speaker 1: next to you in the cafe, the kind of ice
Speaker 1: cream you're eating. All of those details are what make
Speaker 1: a really rich portrait. One thing I'm doing, Brendan, that's
Speaker 1: been so interesting to me is I just decided to
Speaker 1: transcribe all my journals. So I used to keep a
Speaker 1: journal pretty religiously from about the age of nineteen until
Speaker 1: my late thirties, kind of forty ish, and so I have, like,
Speaker 1: you know, like really two decades of journals, and just
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there in front of my computer and I'm
Speaker 1: transcribing them. I'm just typing into a word document everything
Speaker 1: I wrote. And at nineteen I got married, Like I
Speaker 1: got married a month before my twentieth birthday, and my
Speaker 1: ex husband and I we went to Ireland. We'd had
Speaker 1: these like student work visas, and I got a job
Speaker 1: in a vegetarian cafe in Dublin. And it was nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight. And I have these journals and it's been
Speaker 1: so amazing to transcribe them. And I'm so glad that
Speaker 1: I that I took my own advice, the advice I'm
Speaker 1: giving Jordan, which is just write everything down, you know,
Speaker 1: take note, make a make a word portrait, you know,
Speaker 1: as often as you can, about not just what you
Speaker 1: see and smell and hear, about what you're feeling, what
Speaker 1: you're thinking, what's making you happy, what's making you sad?
Speaker 1: What are you remembering about home? You know, everything you
Speaker 1: can put it on the page, because it later becomes
Speaker 1: a treasure if you're a writer, like you're like, how
Speaker 1: does this experience of this young woman for the first
Speaker 1: time in a foreign country, how does that tell a
Speaker 1: more universal story? And then you start to make, you know,
Speaker 1: decisions about like what's the most interesting or what's what
Speaker 1: are the universal threads. That's what I always look for
Speaker 1: in writing, Like, for example, in Wild, the point of
Speaker 1: Wild isn't like I'm such an interesting person because I
Speaker 1: walked a really long way on this wilderness trail. You know. Really,
Speaker 1: I think the reason that Wild resonates with so many
Speaker 1: people is I told a deep story about what does
Speaker 1: it mean like to have to bear the unbearable, like
Speaker 1: to carry that heavy backpacks for that very drugged terrain,
Speaker 1: and I had to keep moving forward even when it hurt.
Speaker 1: And it's a deeper story about not just my journey,
Speaker 1: but what journey means. Journey is all about figuring out
Speaker 1: how you can do what you think you can't do.
Speaker 1: My problem, which I have every day of my life
Speaker 1: and certainly when I'm in traveling, is I wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning and I'm like, I want to have
Speaker 1: a coffee. Maybe I want to exercise, maybe I want
Speaker 1: to run, Maybe I want to experience this, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to watch the sunrise over this thing. Maybe
Speaker 1: I donna. When do you write like like this this
Speaker 1: idea of like write everything down? It's like what, I'm
Speaker 1: too busy living like and I don't have a good memory.
Speaker 1: My brain is a sieve, and so yeah, when do
Speaker 1: you write? Well? I think that in both life and
Speaker 1: and maybe especially in travel, you know, where you feel
Speaker 1: sort of like I'm here to do all these different
Speaker 1: things and see all the different things. Part of experiencing
Speaker 1: a place and part of living. I think a balanced
Speaker 1: in healthy life is having time for you know, contemplation
Speaker 1: and reflection and you know, to me, I mean honestly,
Speaker 1: one of my absolutely favorite things to do when I
Speaker 1: travel is, you know, wander around the city or the
Speaker 1: town or the village or whatever and just find a
Speaker 1: place to sit and write, you know, whether it be
Speaker 1: a cafe or a bar, or a mountainside or a
Speaker 1: stone wall, you know, in some little funky part of town.
Speaker 1: You know, just take those ten minutes to just jot
Speaker 1: down what you're thinking, and you know, of course in life.
Speaker 1: For me, in a strange way, it's actually harder for
Speaker 1: me to do in life than when I'm traveling, because
Speaker 1: I do try to make that kind of contemplative space
Speaker 1: part of the trip. But in life, yeah, you just
Speaker 1: you actually have to make the same commitment to that
Speaker 1: as you do to everything else. If you decide that
Speaker 1: you want to be somebody who exercises most days, you
Speaker 1: exercise most days. And if you decide do you want
Speaker 1: to be somebody who writes most days, you write most days.
Speaker 1: Oh man, oh man, listen, way easier south than um. Okay.
Speaker 1: This next question comes from Anna, and Anna asks what
Speaker 1: are the best shoes to bring on a non hiking trip?
Speaker 1: Do you just suck it up and wear ugly yet
Speaker 1: comfy sneakers at a chic European museum? What if it rains?
Speaker 1: I love this intersection of the practical and the not
Speaker 1: so practical. Oh my goodness, this and this is such
Speaker 1: a really hard question. So Anna, like, I absolutely one
Speaker 1: hundred percent feel this question, and I have lived through
Speaker 1: it for many years now. Because it is especially for women,
Speaker 1: I will say, you know, we do have to make
Speaker 1: this choice very often between you know, real comfort and
Speaker 1: looking at least somewhat decent, you know, and cool and
Speaker 1: you know, cute with whatever outfort we're wearing. But I've
Speaker 1: I've solidly landed on this truth, and I've learned earned
Speaker 1: it the hard way. Anyone who's read Wild knows how
Speaker 1: much I have struggled with shoes and what a price
Speaker 1: I've hate for it, losing my tone nails. Is that,
Speaker 1: you know, comfort really matters a lot, because of course,
Speaker 1: you can go to that museum and you won't be
Speaker 1: able to focus on the art if all you're thinking
Speaker 1: about is how much your feet are killing you. So often,
Speaker 1: the most impressive person of all is the person who
Speaker 1: doesn't conform, who doesn't look like they wore those shoes
Speaker 1: because they want you to think that they look cute.
Speaker 1: They wore those shoes because that's what they feel good.
Speaker 1: And to me, like that's the best look of all
Speaker 1: when you see somebody who's really like comfortable in their
Speaker 1: body and at ease and able to move in a
Speaker 1: way that makes them feel good, And it begins with
Speaker 1: the shoes. So go in the direction of comfort and
Speaker 1: own it all the way and until you look like
Speaker 1: the coolest woman in the room. Here's another move. How
Speaker 1: about a middleway, which is I've done this. You could
Speaker 1: go to a vintage store like you could buy Probably
Speaker 1: you don't have to travel with sexy footwear necessarily or
Speaker 1: good footwear, but if you're going to a very fancy
Speaker 1: meal or invited in some event where it's dress up,
Speaker 1: you know, I love going through vintage stores and like
Speaker 1: Rome or other places, and you can maybe quickly assemble
Speaker 1: a kind of glamorous outfit that you maybe wouldn't feel
Speaker 1: bad leaving behind. Sure. I mean one thing I did
Speaker 1: last summer. I was in Europe for this like seven
Speaker 1: week trip that included all these different things, like everything
Speaker 1: from hiking in whales to going to like a really fancy,
Speaker 1: very you know, Hollywood party in Greece, I mean really
Speaker 1: really well dressed people. And I was like, listen, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be able to like compete with that
Speaker 1: or where you know, stilettos or you know it wasn't
Speaker 1: interested in that, but I do need something to wear
Speaker 1: with dresses. And I did exactly what you suggested. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, I'll buy a pair of like kind
Speaker 1: of fancy flip flops when I'm actually in this beach
Speaker 1: town that I'm going to on this island, right, and
Speaker 1: you can like have that look. It's not fancy, but
Speaker 1: it's a little less clunky than the big comfy, you know,
Speaker 1: sneakers that you might wear all day long at the museum.
Speaker 1: So switch it up, switch it up. The only danger
Speaker 1: there is I've made the mistake. I had my luggage
Speaker 1: lost in Portugal this summer, and you find yourself at
Speaker 1: a Benetton, and you can end up buying like a
Speaker 1: mock turtleneck sleeveless shirt like you, I end up looking
Speaker 1: like this euro like this euro club kid, which is
Speaker 1: definitely not my default look. So you got to be careful.
Speaker 1: You might go, yeah, yeah, I made a similar mistake.
Speaker 1: I bought like a very bright green kind of like
Speaker 1: mumu sort of dress, you know how they always have
Speaker 1: those in like beat places. And then I saw photographs
Speaker 1: of myself and I was like, WHOA what was I thinking?
Speaker 1: I just I know, all right, I've one last question.
Speaker 1: This question comes from Leah, and I think you're uniquely
Speaker 1: suited to answer it, and the question is what types
Speaker 1: of books are best to bring on vacation. That's a
Speaker 1: great one. That's a great one. You know. It also
Speaker 1: makes me smile because when I was hiking the trail
Speaker 1: at first of all, books were like my only companion
Speaker 1: because I very often would go days without seeing another person.
Speaker 1: So books really really were important. They were like my
Speaker 1: only portal into somebody else's mind, you know, other than
Speaker 1: my own. And because I was a backpacker and carrying
Speaker 1: the weight of one book at a time, as I
Speaker 1: read most of the books, I would just burn them,
Speaker 1: which just seemed like so sacrilegious, you know, as somebody
Speaker 1: who loves books. It was like, yeah, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to light this book on fire and burn it. But
Speaker 1: I didn't want to carry the pages, so I did that.
Speaker 1: And at the end of Wild I have this list,
Speaker 1: you know, the books I burned on the PCT. And
Speaker 1: so many people have asked me like, did you really
Speaker 1: think you know really hard about which books to bring?
Speaker 1: And what's funny is I didn't. I just really like
Speaker 1: walked along my bookshelf and grabbed various books from it
Speaker 1: that I had and had never read and had been
Speaker 1: meaning to read and put them in each of my
Speaker 1: resupply boxes. And resupply boxes are basically packages friends would
Speaker 1: send you at different points in your trip. I loved
Speaker 1: every book I read on the PCD, and there was
Speaker 1: something really cool about serendipity of just saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I have never gotten around to reading William Faulkner's As
Speaker 1: I Lay Dying, and I put it into one of
Speaker 1: my boxes and it became one of my favorite books.
Speaker 1: There's also sometimes, you know, it's really cool to curate
Speaker 1: a list of books that like are in some way
Speaker 1: about the place you're visiting, or set in the place
Speaker 1: you're visiting, or written by people who are from the
Speaker 1: place you're traveling to. And that can be really cool too,
Speaker 1: to actually try to deepen the lived experience you're having
Speaker 1: by reading books about it as well. I went to
Speaker 1: Iceland a couple of years ago, and I had never
Speaker 1: read the literature of the country, and I found this
Speaker 1: novel called miss Iceland by this author who I absolutely love.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to say her name because I
Speaker 1: just don't know how to pronounce it, but it's called
Speaker 1: miss Iceland, and it's just this really wonderful novel set
Speaker 1: in Iceland and many decades ago. But it's like it
Speaker 1: gave me a sense of the country and the place
Speaker 1: and the sensibility that that deepened my experience. Then when
Speaker 1: I got to Iceland, I kept remembering this, this main
Speaker 1: character in the novel, and you know, she worked at
Speaker 1: this hotel in Rekuveck, and and I like, I walked
Speaker 1: by these historic hotels and I'd think, oh, that that's
Speaker 1: like where the character worked, like and there was something
Speaker 1: that felt really wonderful about going to the country having
Speaker 1: read something that was set there, written by somebody who
Speaker 1: is from there. Yeah, it's like knowing if that And
Speaker 1: you know, I think books, yeah, you know, never, I
Speaker 1: mean I would never think of traveling anywhere without a book,
Speaker 1: because when you have a book, you always have a companion.
Speaker 1: I think that that can be really grounding to have
Speaker 1: just like that sort of touchstone of a story that
Speaker 1: you're involved in while you're also in this new world. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the books you took in wild there were
Speaker 1: literary works, and I think there's a lot to be
Speaker 1: said for a beach read or getting some genre reading in.
Speaker 1: But I do think I will often bring like I
Speaker 1: feel like I've only read Nabokov, like On Vacation or
Speaker 1: Cheam Salt or some of these kind of heavier hitters
Speaker 1: because sometimes it's harder for me to crack open and
Speaker 1: get in there. But if it's the one English language
Speaker 1: book you have in your pack, you're gonna really kind
Speaker 1: of steep in it in a way that you maybe
Speaker 1: wouldn't if it's just you're reading it on the sub
Speaker 1: I agree. I don't like the whole idea that a
Speaker 1: beach read is like a light reader. I go for
Speaker 1: the heavy books because also when you're on a trip,
Speaker 1: you often have more hours than in the day two read,
Speaker 1: so you can sink in m Chrystade, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for chatting with me. I'm excited to check out
Speaker 1: your show when it comes out on Hulu, and I'm
Speaker 1: excited to share this with my audience. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking Thank you. It was really a pleasure
Speaker 1: to talk to you. And I have to say it
Speaker 1: happy trails. That was Sheryl Straid. The Tiny Beautiful Things
Speaker 1: TV show will be out on Hulu this spring, and
Speaker 1: if you haven't read Wild or haven't looked at it
Speaker 1: in a while, I encourage you to go back. It
Speaker 1: is a luck grittier than I remembered. It is a
Speaker 1: pretty good read that confirms my decision not to go
Speaker 1: into the great outdoors anymore. So that's it for this
Speaker 1: edition of That Lost Chat. If you have travel questions
Speaker 1: that you want answered in a future episode, we got
Speaker 1: one more left for this series. Please email them to
Speaker 1: me at not Lost at Pushkin dot fm or Pingey
Speaker 1: at bf snacks on Twitter. Not Lost Chat is produced
Speaker 1: by Jordan Bailly, who, as we all know, travels a
Speaker 1: lot more than me. In fact, she's heading to CDMX
Speaker 1: in just a couple of weeks. The show is written
Speaker 1: and hosted by me Brendan Francis Nunham. Booking assistance came
Speaker 1: from Laura Morgan. This episode was edited by Julia Barton
Speaker 1: with assistance from Managing producer Jacob Smith. Our mix engineer
Speaker 1: and co producer is the brilliant and wonderful Sarah Brugure.
Speaker 1: Not Lost as a co production of Pushkin Industries, Topic
Speaker 1: Studios and iHeartMedia. It was developed at Topic Studios. Executive
Speaker 1: producers include me Brendan Francis Nunham, Christy Gressman, Maria Zuckerman,
Speaker 1: Lisa line Gang and Latom Malade. And if you enjoy
Speaker 1: what you here, please tell a friend, make a commented
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, spread the word. It's all greatly appreciated, and
Speaker 1: as ever, if your inboxes lonely, sign up for the
Speaker 1: Pushkin newsletter at Pushkin dot fm, slash newsletter. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to listen to more Pushkin podcast and there's some
Speaker 1: great stuff happening, we got deep cover. You can go
Speaker 1: back in time and listen to Death of an Artist,
Speaker 1: which is a fantastic show, lots of good stuff, Loudest
Speaker 1: Girl in the World, Story of the Week. You can
Speaker 1: listen and find them on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcast. That's it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the end. Bo