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Recently in Salon Travel

"Water" and other stories
A drowning, porcelain cows, a chubby sultan and more: Six original pieces turn travel on its dreamy ear.
By Barry Yourgrau
[07/17/99]

Cinema verities
They cast me as the white guy with the Indian lover. But my Indian lover found me untouchable.
By Jonah Blank
[07/16/99]

Travel Advisor
Too much duty
Our expert offers advice on duty-free goods, allegedly smoke-free rooms, golfing packages and San Francisco lodging, revisited.
By Donald D. Groff
[07/15/99]

Book Bag
The art of survival and other stories
Two new books offer tips and tales from the wild wide world.
By Don George
[07/14/99]

Out of the Blue
Sex and the thin-walled room
When you spend half your life in hotels, you learn a lot about your neighbors.
By Elliott Neal Hester
[07/13/99]

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I suspect my travel proclivities root to my youth. I grew up in the '60s in a beautiful but sleepy Southern California town where summer travel generally meant schlepping umbrellas and lawn chairs the few blocks west to the beach. There was the family in our neighborhood who toted sleek colored luggage to mythical places such as Italy or Switzerland, another who crammed heavy tents into their Country Squire station wagon and lit out for a national park. In our house, travel was nothing so exotic.

We beached it through late July and by then, bored with endless days of paradise and with our peeling noses resembling raw hamburger, we readied for summer camp. My father lugged my footlocker in from the garage and my mother sewed conspicuous name tags into my underwear. I diligently sacrificed the centers from even some of my favorite books in order to forge hiding places for my four-week stash of camp-forbidden candy.

From the ages of 7 to 17, I spent my Augusts on a working ranch camp in California's dry and dusty Sierra foothills. This co-ed ranch was run by two strict ex-schoolteachers alongside a rotating group of fresh-faced college kids as counselors, at least one of whom I fell in love with every year. Rustic may be too generous a description of the camp's actual quarters. We slept outside on squeaky cots, brushed our teeth at a row of open-air spigots and -- with some trepidation -- hiked dusty trails to use the splintery, wooden outhouses which were often home to baby scorpions. Showers were taken indoors, en masse, eight at a time, in a large tiled room with a notably firm counselor at the hose. After being sprayed down, we soaped ourselves up and after a first rinsing, were blasted with a stream of pure cold. The cold rinse, we were mysteriously assured, would prevent us from catching cold. At the first suggestion of the final spray, we shrieked and huddled together, each trying to hide behind the other. The grumpiest, crankiest counselor was always gleeful at the nozzle.

This was -- and is still -- a large working ranch and chores were required of the campers to keep the place running. When not volunteered for, the chores were assigned: weeding or harvesting the garden, feeding or cleaning up after the livestock or, for the strong-stomached, assisting with a slaughter. Those of us who returned year after year knew which tasks were fun and easy (collecting chicken eggs, lunch dishes, feeding the newborn calves) and which were to be avoided (bean-picking, barn cleanup, dinner dishes).

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