Catherine Watson

From the mountaintop road above Kvivik, green slopes fell steeply away to the sea, and the sea swept my eyes outward, over the village, to the soft shapes of other islands drifting in the pale blue distance. More than a thousand years of Faroe Islands history lay in that view. It was

I’m startled, now that I am writing this, at seeing the many links to the sea in my life. And to exile.

When I was eight, my heart’s desire was to run away to sea and be a cabin boy on a clipper ship. There was a lot wrong with this plan –

“Pilgrimages,’’ I reminded myself, as I struggled over yet another fallen tree, “aren’t supposed to be easy.’’

But I had thought this one would be. I had gone to the South Seas to meet Robert Louis Stevenson on his own turf – to see the spacious house that was the

To the end of his days, my father insisted that my travels were nothing more than “escapism.” Whenever I said I was going somewhere alone, he accused me of running away, of being “avoidant.” It didn’t matter whether it was Europe or the movies.

“What is wrong with

I was in Ecuador, on my way to a folklore performance, sharing a ride with two other tourists – a middle-aged Canadian woman and a young computer guy from California. They started comparing notes on their Latin American travels. I didn’t join