Chris Arnade Walks the World

I ignored the first signs something was wrong, early on Wednesday morning — a sharp but minor pain on my left side, just under my heart. Since it only flared when I leaned forward, or moved quickly, I’d assumed I’d tweaked a muscle, or a tendon, or something fiber-y, in my rib cage near my lung, but what was around there I wasn’t exactly sure — my knowledge of anatomy is remedial, by design.

My introduction to Darwin was a bottle fight between two aboriginal men that neither could win, because both were too drunk. It was in the desolate courtyard of the Northern Territory Supreme Court, an immaculate white building, empty other than still figures scattered in whatever shade there was. Those however were collapsed and quiet, but these two were up and shouting at each other, bottles raised high.

(I broke-up this ride with a night in Katherine. Which meant a six hour bus trip from Darwin to Katherine the first day, then a seventeen hour ride from Katherine to Alice Springs the next.

(Prior pieces on Australia: First impressions of Sydney, Sydney the suburban paradise, Twenty-seven hours on the Aussie dog, Alice Springs, and Final thoughts on Australia, and from last week, Perth. I’m in a McDonald’s in Katherine, half way on my bus trip to Alice Springs. I have more to write about that, and about Alice Springs, but until I can get settled and figure it all out, here is an essay I wrote over last few days.

(This is my second time in Australia. Here are five pieces from my prior trip: First impressions of Sydney, Sydney the suburban paradise, Twenty-seven hours on the Aussie dog, Alice Springs, andFinal thoughts on Australia.) As our plane to Perth angled out of Sydney, its full magnificence — the harbor, cliffs, and beaches — spread diorama like beneath us, I mentioned to the elderly woman next to me, “You have such a beautiful country, so gifted” and she shrugged, “Too many people.

Each morning I wake up and go to the beach1, without crowds or sticky salt water. After a short swim, because I’m not much of a beach person, I leave for a ten mile walk on small shaded roads through forests and fields. Then in the afternoon I read in the McDonald’s, or in a park, or the library, and then at night I either go to a dive bar (I’ve got five excellent choices where I can get twenty five ounce drafts for five or less), or one of the six craft beer places nearby.

(Last weekend I spoke at the Doomer Optimism conference,Another Life is Possible, at the Woodcrest Bruderhof community in Rifton, NY. Below is the talk I didn’t give, and then the talk I did, as well as thoughts a week removed.

I walk because it allows you to see a place in a way that you can’t when zooming through it, treating it as a spectacle to be commodified1. You get to know it, and the people in it, at a thick level, warts and all. You see things that others, including sometimes locals, miss, because of a perspective that comes with being an outsider, but one moving cautiously and slowly. The two people I’m interviewing here also do that, but in different ways, and in different places.

I’ll be doing two zoom calls to discuss Moby Dick — July 14th (Tuesday) at 7 p.m. and July 15th (a Wednesday) at noon, (both NY time) — I hope many of you read it, and then join one of the calls1. Below is my review, of sorts. Needless to say, with spoilers, so if somehow you don’t already know how it ends, maybe wait until you finish the book. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

Sometimes I immediately like a place, or don’t. As a travel writer I’m supposed to have informed reasons for my judgements, but the reality is sometimes I simply fall in love (or hate) at first sight, and that happened with Estonia, an infatuation that grew and grew over my week there.