(Hope Edelman is the author of the New York Times bestseller Motherless Daughters.)

“What do you believe in?” Uzi asked me one night.
“I’m a card-carrying member of the Church of the Senses,” I said. “I have to see to believe.”
“No, I’m serious,” he said. “What do you believe in? Really believe in?”
To parse out what I truly believe in from what I once used to believe in and what I wish I could believe in — it’s a harder task than one might think. …
“I believe in the possibility of everything,” I told my husband. “But I can’t place my trust in anything without visible proof.”

This conversation, from Hope Edelman’s new memoir The Possibility of Everything, forms the crux of a story that takes it beyond a traditional travelogue — the story of a troubled family’s trip to Belize — and into territory that approaches the important questions and truths of our existence. In The Possibility of Everything, Hope Edeleman looks unflinchingly for answers that most of the literati — often especially true of those engaged in travel writing — like to pretend don’t exist.

It is a flaw in the adult literature of the 20th century that the writings considered intellectually important are the ones that shy away from the big questions facing humanity: what is right? What is wrong? What do we believe in? Many young adult and children’s books have become popular, I believe, because they are willing to address those issues that well-known adult writers are often ashamed to admit thinking about. Perhaps it is to travel writing — especially travel books like Edelman’s — that adults must look for serious contemplation of these issues.

But Edelman’s book is not simply — or even mostly — about faith and the conundrums of existence. It is, at heart, a travel story, covering the journey of a family in turmoil in California to their searches for answers in Belize, and what they discover about themselves on the way.

The Possibility of Everything opens with a scene so well-written I had to shut the book after reading the first paragraph and wait until I had more than five minutes free. This was, I knew immediately, a book I wanted to sink into.

“A ragged dirt road twists through six miles of rain forest in western Belize, … If you make this drive the day after a heavy December rain, as my husband, Uzi, and I do, the road will still be gluey and ripe. Its surface will be the color and consistency of mango pudding. … [Y]ou might look down at the three-year-old lying across your lap and think about how she is a child who loves mangoes and loves pudding but that you have never thought to put the two together for her before. … Or you might look down at her and just think, Please, and leave it at that.”

Edelman then takes us back — far back, it seems, although in reality it’s only a few months. But it is worlds away, to Los Angeles and a hectic, busy life with the pressures of motherhood and a strained marriage, and to the scene where the troubles erupted, the occasion that wound its way through confusion and fear, frustration and heartbreak, to land the family on a mango-pudding road in Belize, searching for a shaman. A violent outburst from a little girl, out of nowhere, inflicted on her mother and blamed on an imaginary friend, is simply a precursor of things to come.

Edelman’s daughter, Maya, is not, the author is convinced, possessed by an evil spirit. It’s just not something she believes in, although her husband is more open to that possibility. For the author, the concept is too weird.

But her mothering instincts are shouting from under societal expectations and her own doubt. Maya has an imaginary friend, Dodo, whose behavior is violent from the outset — or whose influence causes Maya to be so — and worsens over time. Edelman paints a vivid picture of a mother wearied to the bone with uncontrollable tantrums and worried sick about what is happening to her little girl.

This is the point when most of we semi-experienced parenters jump in with scoffing. This problem, we say, is likely psychological, often normal for a child her age, very probably your fault anyway … in any case, it clearly does not call for a family trip to Belize.

Not only has Edelman gone down every single one of those roads already, she agrees, at least about not needing to visit a shaman in a foreign land. Her husband is interested in the shamans practicing ancient healing wisdom in the country, but she is not. She does, however, agree that the family could use a vacation. So, right before Christmas 2000 the four of them — mother, father, Maya, and the imaginary (or not) friend/evil spirit Dodo — board an airplane for Belize.

It is hard to talk about the travel aspects of this book without also incorporating questions of faith, fear, and motherhood. I’ll bring in clichés for a moment: for those who haven’t dived into the darkest areas of their imaginations, the places where their worst fear resides, this book’s self-questioning and emotionality might come across as overblown and overdrawn, detracting from its excellent writing and observation. But Edelman’s inward journey, driven by worry about her child’s health, is part and parcel of what binds this book together. Her best observations are made when contemplating her own situation, and that of her family, and what I like best about them, and Edelman’s writing in general, is the spicy, honest humor she never fails to include, even in the most introspective moments:

“And yet. Sitting here in the deep green chair on the front porch of our cabana, underneath this roof thatched by hand, gazing out on a trellis of hot-pink bougainvillea while the gray horse munches on grass and the bees buzz and the mot-mot birds do their mysterious mot-mot things up in the canopy, a whole ecosystem waking up to a bright new day … well, I can’t believe I’m going to say this. But when Don Elijio tells Rosita that with faith, anything is possible, the idea that other people can have such views without being completely delusional suckers … I can live with that right now.”

Edelman and her family don’t spend a huge amount of time in Belize. A little in the jungle, a short trip to visit magnificent ruins of the Mayan empire in Guatemala, and some time by the sea. But each spot is enriched with the continuing family drama, increased personal desperation, and willingness to learn from the people they meet. In the end it is the place and the people that feed the internal journey, not the other way around. When they do finally allow a shaman to treat their daughter, they have already learned much, enough to give them a little faith in simple healing: a flower bath that, insanely, seems to work. Dodo disappears.

Edelman is changed by her experience, and not just in the way she views her daughter’s health or religious faith. At one point she makes the claim that part of travel’s attraction for her is its ability to reaffirm who she is. All those foreign situations, which for me make me constantly question who I am and where I come from, for her bring a stronger, reassured sense of self. But, as with all the other convictions she packs on this trip, this one, too, is brought into question. She begins to view her daughter’s illness as, partly, her family’s illness, and an illness that couldn’t be cured by the society she lives in.

“The thought takes shape until it forms a perfect sentence: I’m lonely at home. I’m not lonely here. Here I’ve been surrounded by happy people and I’ve been laughing for the first time in months. In six days, we’ll head back to a place where the mind-set insists that imaginary friends are purely a child’s mental invention, … In our brief time here, I’ve entered a culture that doesn’t think of me as a crazy mother for wondering if Dodo could be more than a child’s elaborate idea.”

For those who condemned Eat, Pray, Love as “emotional porn for women,” The Possibilty of Everything is not going to be an attractive read. Even for those who enjoy the story, it has flaws. Sometimes the introspection is too drawn-out, and the long reminiscences and explanations of Edelman’s own history and convictions, while well written and interesting, detract from a story that would be stronger if it were tighter. And her continued references to her deceased mother might be confusing for those who, like me, haven’t read her New York Times bestselling book Motherless Daughters.

However, I still find it a riveting story of sterling quality. It is, in a way, a gift, wrapped in keen observation, a portrait of a family’s journey and the places they’re taken to, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Honest and unflinching introspection define this book. It is for anyone who’s ever traveled looking to heal themselves, or a loved one. It is for those who journey with questions in their heart, those who need a foreign land to help them face their own limitations and fears. It is, especially, for parents, for mothers, whose children often baffle us and sometimes scare us. For those who might be encouraged to know that somewhere in this world there is a culture and community that might show us another road for health, parenting, understanding, and a way to live.

That, after all, is what travel gives us: new paths, no matter what we’re looking for.

Travel is first about experience, but then, very quickly, it’s about memories.  If you peek in any traveler’s bag, you’ll find the evidence of some habit designed to capture memories, whether it’s a camera, a video camera, a journal, a sketchbook,  a collection of souvenirs, ephemera for scrapbooks.

This is all as it should be, because memories are a very serious business. I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week since I just re-read  Context is Everything: the Nature of Memory, by Susan Engel.  She writes that our memories are the basic building blocks of our sense of self –when we share them with others, it’s an act of intimacy – it’s because we want them to know who we are. The book doesn’t mention travel at all, but since travel is one of the few common activities that’s almost explicitly about “making memories”, it’s interesting to think about how memory works in travel and its aftermath.

For instance, there’s one cliché definition of hell that is the harrowing experience of someone showing you their vacation pictures, endlessly, unceasingly, in minute detail.  Thinking about it through the lens of memory research, what’s almost universally a dreadful experience is a bit poignant. The returning vacationer wants to share an essential bit of their deepest self (their memories, their soul!), the people who are watching would rather not, thanks so much.

But memory research is also instructive to the would-be sharer of vacation photos, because what we’re really all interested in emotional content: not the facts, but the feelings. Not what happened on your trip, precisely but what you thought and felt at the time. And the most important question of it all: how did the trip change you?

In fact, when you’re nowhere near whatever your memory aid of choice is,  when you just allow your mind to cast back over your travels, that’s probably what will come to mind first: the memories that changed the way you see the world and your place in it,  that represented some kind of a turning point in your life. That, and the memories that represent something that you feel is important about yourself.  (These are usually memories that will cast the most favorable light upon you, by the way. ) And another thing about our travel memories: while there’s an idea, and a rather noble one at that, that travelers “get outside themselves” and focus more on the rest of the world, our memories won’t likely reflect that. We tend to make our role more central in all events that we experience, we’re the star of our own show – it’s a typical memory distortion, and Engel uses the fabulous term “totalitarian ego” to explain it.

At any rate, this suggests that perhaps we needn’t spend so much time during our travels trying to preserve memories. We’ve all seen the people who travel around with the camera or video camera permanently affixed to their faces. I’ve been that person, in fact.  I went on a safari to  Kruger National Park in South Africa a couple of years ago, armed with both a camera and  video camera.  When I think about it now, my most vivid memories aren’t in broad daylight – oh, I remember a lot of it, but my daytime memories tend to be…smaller, since I was looking at the giraffes and elephants and zebras through an LCD screen. The urge to photograph what I was seeing was completely irresistible to me. But when the sun went down, I took a few shots and then I put my cameras away. The Land Rover caught up with a pride of young male lions, and for an hour or so we rolled along with them, their grayish shapes in and out of the spotlight – it’s a moment I can conjure up in all of its dimensions, right this moment, without much effort.

(Oh, I’ve yet to determine what important thing that memory says about my Self. Maybe you’ll find it comforting as I do to know that this is common: we often have vivid memories first and figure out their meaning later, kind of like a dream.)

Speaking of dreams, there is a way to make it more likely that you’ll retain your travel memories without the aid of a camera or paper.  It’s a fact that memories are more easily recalled when we recall them often –  so the more often we revisit a memory the easier time we’ll have doing that again in the future. It’s old advice, but sound: if you want to remember what happened to you during the day, tell yourself the story of your day before you go to sleep at night.

There’s another way to solidify your memories: share them with others, your travel companions, loved ones back home, whether it’s by phone, email or post card, Twitter or Facebook. You’ll be recalling the memory to share it, of course, and that will affix it better in your mind. But there’s something else you should know first: memories don’t exist in a mental filing cabinet, to be brought out whole, shared and then put away again. Instead, the way our minds work is closer to imagination – we reconstruct our memories each time we remember them.  And when we do this in a socially, the memory is influenced by who we’re telling the story to, why we’re telling it, what we’ve decided it means, how it makes us look. Each time you share a memory, each instance flavors the memory. “Once shared, a memory is changed forever,”  Engel writes.

In one way that’s quite beautiful – our memories grow and change as we do. In another way, it’s distressing.  What can we trust if not our own minds? I suppose the answer is our photos, travel journals and scrapbooks – immutable over time, immune to social forces and ultimately, not subject to revision by our totalitarian egos.

While doing some research for my tourism blog about how to use photos from Twitter to update fall foliage reports, I found that there are a lot of places to be a happy leaf-peeper besides the US New England region (traditionally the color champ in autumn.)

Here are some suggestions:

• Oregon —  The Oregon tourism folks have a fall foliage blog and they also update with color reports from @ORFallFoliage on Twitter; the latest tweet I saw said, “Driving north on I-5 from Eugene this morning. Just a hint of gold and yellow…”

• Tennessee —  Lots of ideas here for fall color scenic drives in the Volunteer State,  including obvious places like the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (2009 is the Park’s 75th anniversary) but also the intriguing Appalachian Quilt Trail.  Don’t miss the Chattanooga area fall festivals – Perceptive Travel‘s editor Tim Leffel is a big fan of the city for family travel.

• Wisconsin —  Besides the turning leaves in places like charming Door County, how can you miss with a corn maze like this one?  Or craft beer breweries?

• Pennsylvania —  Browse through the Fall in PA page, then figure out how to combine foliage with perhaps a Civil War trail like the Road to Gettysburg or a “libation vacation” on the Pennsylvania Wine Trails.

• Arkansas —  The state tourism site has a whole Web page devoted to fall foliage travel planning.  Find dramatic forested vistas on north-south Arkansas Scenic Highway 7 (a National Scenic Byway) and the wonderfully-named Pig Trail in the Ozark National Forest. Soo-eee.

If you do end up in the New England area, take a look at Yankee magazine’s New England Foliage Blog or color tweets from the man himself, photographer Jeff “Foliage” Folger on @Foliage_Reports.

Where do you like to watch the leaves turn? Please tell us your favorites in the comments – thanks!

Travel by cruise ship is not green according to this report released recently by the environmental group Friends of the Earth. Their report card which graded 10 major cruise ship lines found almost all of them are failing in their attempts to reduce pollution. The highest grade -  a “B” – went to Holland America Line. Norwegian Cruise Lines and Princess Cruises each got a “B-minus, ” Carnival Cruise Lines received a “D-minus”, and  Disney Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean International both got an “F”.

Ever wonder what happens to all the soap that gets thrown away in hotels?

Mostly, it just gets dumped.

But 40 hotels in Atlanta is participating in a ‘soap for Africa program’. These hotels are collecting used hotel soap and recycling them for use in refugee camps in Uganda. It’s a great way to not only help the environment but also help fight the spread of disease.

Meanwhile, nature loving dinners should bookmark these tree house restaurants. Taking al fresco dining to the extreme, these restaurants, located around the world (including New Zealand), look like a fun and unique way to enjoy local cuisine.

Other green travel news tidbits…

Associated Press writes about how Cuba hopes green tourism can keep it in the black

SFGate looks at green souvenirs for Hawaii’s eco-friendly tourists.

Inhabitat reports on Vulcano Buono, an huge cone-shaped ‘green’ commercial center that’s been built in the Italian city of Nola.

Intelligent Travel introduces us to the Man Bikes Around the World With $2 in Pocket.

Green Dairy reports that Shanghai Expo 2010 to have a pavilion made from recylable plastic

Peter Greenberg writes about Rainforest Foraging in Costa Rica

Seattle Times reports on the Climate Passport kiosks at San Francisco Airport

And finally, the green destinations of the week are Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Oregon

(image source)

Before I visited Provence, I had imagined it as beautiful, gently refined, and hypnotic. I planned on spending four days there stupefied with food and wine, rolling through the purple visage of lavender fields. Instead, I found a harsh, vertically-defined landscape.

This was not the France of gentle postcards and feast-filled guidebooks. This was Haute Provence, the 1900-square-kilometer Geological Preserve where gorges sliced through crazed mountains and made driving a roller coaster adventure.

We’d driven up 200 kilometers from Nice. My husband had little experience driving a manual car, so the tiny-engined Opal Corsica was in my terrified hands. A narrow highway cutting through dark mountain passes, the road constricted even more to sidle through long tunnels. I couldn’t get used to the French idea of treating the highway as a single lane, moving to one side only when a car came the other direction.

When we finally arrived in Castellane, I pulled the handbrake with a weak, shaky jerk. As I looked around, simple admiration finally overtook white-knuckled fear. The tiny town guarded the entrance to the Gorges du Verdon, (also known as ‘Grand Canyon du Verdon’) a gorge 21 kilometers long, the Verdon River racing along the bottom.

An ancient church brooded high on a cliff top overlooking Castellane’s center, a place of colorful shuttered buildings that I never would have heard of if it hadn’t contained the only available hotel rooms in July. And we were lucky to get those.

The next morning I dragged my husband out without enough coffee, insisting that fresh air would wake him up. Dutch, German, and French tourists on elongated summer holidays strolled and raced (depending on age) to the cliffhanging, fenced-in scenic overlook.

The view tumbled 700 meters to a glacier-blue river that wound through the gorge, on its way from one dam-made lake to another, both out of sight. While kids squeezed through the fence to hang out over the shrubby cliff, I stood well back, safely against a boulder. I could deal with heights; it was just my knees that dissolved.

The magnificent view wasn’t what we’d come to see. A steep trail ran from the parking lot where we left the car, down to the river, along its bottom, and back up again at the other end. We backtracked to the trailhead, hidden among trees and shrubs that blocked any view, but the other tourists also disappeared.

Halfway down, we tucked ourselves under a rock overhang and ate the Brie, baguette, and mandarins I’d bought that morning. A pair of slim, muscular men powered up to us from below. They’d hiked into the gorge from the opposite end.

“Very nice,” said the younger one in German-accented English, running his hand through stubby brown hair. “Nice spot. You go all the way?”

“No,” I said. “We started too late.” In the cool, clear morning, it had been tempting, as always, to swing sleepily by the scenic overlooks and drive on to a soporific lunch, but Verdon had views that could only be seen on foot.

“Plenty of time,” they said when we asked if we had time to walk along the river bottom. “It’s not so late.” The two men hefted their packs and powered back uphill. We, lazy and office-worker soft, lumbered downhill more slowly.

When we arrived at the river some time later, tourists popped up again, younger and fitter than those at the top of the gorge. Teams of active twenty- and thirty-somethings huddled around a lumpy, boulder-filled area that served as a beach and picnic spot. They cheered as the rest of their companions body-surfed down the rapids.

The Verdon River, which was dammed, could rise several feet within seconds, guidebooks warned; these adventurers could only traverse it in guided groups. The water cooled my feet before we entered the tunnels and quiet trails that snaked alongside the river.

Between hiking and sleeping, Castellane’s minor distractions were sufficient, although it had limited attractions for the culture-seeker. Its little restaurants were few but excellent, a cliché of French cuisine. “Twelve manner snails burgundy” and “Cobblestone of Sandre to the white butter” turned out to be exquisite, melting morsels, easily translatable to the palate if not into English.

The day before we left, we hiked up to the lady of Castellane, the eighth-century church on the cliff, Notre Dame du Roc. Its ancient path wandered up the backside of a mountain through the ruins of a monastery.

“Imagine,” I puffed, as I scrambled on the steep slope, “having to trek up here every day, carrying supplies and trying to push a donkey along.” We reached the top with our hearts pounding.

We looked out over the cliff’s view, a vista I could appreciate a good distance from the edge. Castellane, shuttered by mountains, its only outlet along the narrow road or the escape of the river, looked even smaller from above.

Although it wasn’t what I had imagined I would find in Provence, its rugged beauty was more rewarding by far.