Travel

No one ever told me that relaxing would be such a hard thing to do.

Leaving Louisiana means going back to a place that’s colder — climactically and culturally. My chub rub will appreciate the cool down, but I am not looking forward to returning to a place that’s so dry. There’s something about New Orleans, so hot and haunted, that pushes me into my body and the precious tenuousness of my humanity.

For some hard-working, kickass ladies, going on an epic solo hike wasn’t just an afterthought inspired by Wild, but an adventure that fundamentally changed their lives.

Instead of falling in love with the culinary paradise, I was stuck in a cycle of disordered eating and dealing with it thousands of miles away from home.

All that to say, I’ve seen my share of naked bodies. I am glad that there are spaces where people can feel comfortable disrobing, and when we pass through such a beach, I find it normal. I simply have no desire to join them.

I was an American Jew in Palestine. I wondered if I had made a mistake in coming here, in leaving the relative safety of my hotel in Jerusalem, or the even greater comfort of my Seattle home, where my husband and six-month-old waited for me. But the most dangerous thing about eating lunch in Palestine was that I might have exploded from eating too much.

My breathing hastened and my crying intensified. The elevation wasn’t doing me any favors. All I knew was that it was pitch black on a lava field in Guatemala and I’d lost my tour group.

There is a version of me that would have shoved another taco down the hatch and spent the rest of the night feeling like my heart was on fire and trying to run away from my stuffed stomach by way of my mouth.