For every new $50 annual subscription to No Passport Required during September, I’m donating $25 in honor of the 25th anniversary of September 11.

The full challenge—and why I’m doing it—is below.

Caption: The 9/11 Memorial, September 11, 2021. Photo by Joseph Burns.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in Los Feliz, California.

I was supposed to see my chiropractor that morning. Instead, he woke me up with a phone call and told me to turn on the television.

Like millions of other people, I sat there trying to understand what I was looking at.

At first, it didn’t seem real.

How could it be real?

And then I watched the second plane hit the South Tower.

After that, I don’t remember moving very much.

I was immobilized. Glued to the television. Watching something unfold that none of us could comprehend yet, but knowing somehow that the world had just changed.

It didn’t take long before the enormous numbers we were hearing began to become actual people.

My high school principal lost his son and his son-in-law that morning.

His son, John Armand Reo, was just 28 years old and had recently begun working as a bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the North Tower. His brother-in-law, John Swaine, worked there as well. Both were killed.

Cantor Fitzgerald alone lost 658 employees that morning.

John’s sister and I had gone to middle school and high school together. We were friends throughout those years.

Caption: John Armand Reo’s name at the 9/11 Memorial. Photo by Joseph Burns.

Years later, I would discover another connection.

A woman whose grandparents were my next door neighbor lost her father, Louis Aversano who worked at the World Trade Center. We had fallen out of contact, so I didn’t know at the time. It wasn’t until social media brought us back into one another’s lives nearly a decade later that I learned what her family had been through.

That’s something I’ve thought about many times since.

The circles just kept getting wider.

Someone’s son. Someone’s father. Someone’s husband. Someone’s brother. Someone’s friend.

Behind every number was a person.

And behind every person was a circle of people whose lives would never be the same.

WHAT I ALSO REMEMBER

There is something else I remember about that time.

I went to a church.

I remember sitting there surrounded by strangers, all of us trying to process something none of us knew how to process.

And I remember a stranger putting his arm around my shoulder and hugging me.

I didn’t know him.

It didn’t matter.

When I looked around that church, I saw every kind of person. Different religions. Different races. Different colors. Different sexualities. People who undoubtedly disagreed about politics, religion and a hundred other things.

For that moment, none of it mattered.

We were simply people who were hurting.

There was an extraordinary collective mourning happening across America.

But something else was happening, too.

People showed up for one another.

They donated blood. They brought food. They checked on neighbors. They comforted strangers.

Thousands went to Ground Zero and worked in unimaginable conditions.

They searched through rubble. They fed firefighters and police officers. They supported recovery workers. They volunteered because somebody needed help and they were capable of helping.

Caption: St. Paul’s Chapel became a place of refuge and support for recovery workers after September 11. Photo by Joseph Burns.

Many of them would eventually pay an enormous price for it.

September 11 didn’t stop taking lives when the towers fell.

Responders, recovery workers and volunteers breathed the toxic dust that covered Lower Manhattan. In the years and decades that followed, many developed cancers, respiratory illnesses and other diseases.

Some survived September 11 only to die years later because they showed up to help.

Twenty-five years later, people are still becoming sick.

Families are still losing people.

The death toll continues to grow.

They are part of the story, too.

And they are part of what Never Forget means to me.

Caption: Ground Zero in the aftermath of September 11. Photo by Joseph Burns.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

I would never romanticize the days following September 11. The horror that brought us together was unimaginable.

But I do miss something about who we became for a little while afterward.

I saw some of the very best of America during one of the darkest periods in our history.

And we’ve come so far from that.

Today we’re encouraged constantly to choose sides. To put people into categories. To decide that someone who votes differently, worships differently, loves differently or sees the world differently must somehow be our enemy.

For a brief period after September 11, we remembered something much simpler.

We belonged to one another.

Maybe twenty-five years later, that’s something worth remembering, too.

Caption: Lower Manhattan today. Photo by Joseph Burns.

MY SEPTEMBER CHALLENGE

I don’t want to spend this anniversary simply posting the words Never Forget.

I want to do something.

So I’m putting out a challenge.

If you’ve been reading No Passport Required, following my journey, or thinking about becoming a paid subscriber, September is the month I’m asking you to do it.

An annual subscription is $50.

For every new annual paid subscription during September, I’m donating $25—half of the subscription—in honor of the 25th anniversary of September 11.

At the end of the month, the money will be divided equally among:

Tunnel to Towers Foundation

9/11 Day

Tuesday’s Children

Three organizations carrying forward different parts of the legacy of September 11 through service, remembrance and support.

At the end of September, I’ll share exactly how much we raised and donated.

You get a year of No Passport Required.

Half of your subscription goes back out into the world.

Will this change the world?

No.

But maybe changing the entire world was never the assignment.

Twenty-five years ago, people did what they could.

They donated blood.

They made food.

They searched through rubble.

They fed strangers.

They put their arms around people they didn’t know in churches.

They showed up.

Twenty-five years later, maybe that’s one of the best ways we can honor them.

By showing up again.

Who’s up for the challenge?

My thoughts are with the Aversano and Rei families, along with every family and every person whose life was touched by that dark day in world history.

We Will Never Forget. 9/11/01

On Tuesday, the day Dolly Parton died, there was an incredible rainbow over the lake.

I looked at it and thought, That is either for her or from her.

Later that night, there was an incredible moon. Then, three days later, there was a double rainbow, followed that night by a lunar eclipse.

I’m a big believer in signs. I can’t explain what any of it meant, but the timing was hard to ignore. It felt as if the sky was somehow participating in what the rest of the world was feeling.

I’m not going to pretend I knew every Dolly Parton song or that I closely followed country music. I didn’t. But whenever Dolly appeared, you paid attention.

Maybe part of it was the wonderful absurdity of the big breasts, the big hair, the long nails, the rhinestones, and the whole over-the-top image. She knew exactly what people saw when they looked at her, and she was usually the first person to make a joke about it.

But that wasn’t what held your attention.

It was her energy.

There was something about her being that drew you in. You could feel the love, the humor, the awareness, the acceptance, and the compassion. She could command an entire room without making anyone else feel smaller.

She made room for people.

That’s what I admired most about her.

She supported LGBTQ people when it wasn’t always convenient or popular. She cared about children, underprivileged families, and communities going through disasters. For me, her philanthropy may have been the most impressive thing about her.

She didn’t just talk about kindness. She put her money, her time, and her name behind it.

The more I travel and the more people I meet, the more I understand that we are not nearly as different as we are taught to believe.

I’ve met people from completely different cultures, countries, religions, and backgrounds. Again and again, I find the same basic things. People want to be seen. They want to be accepted. They want to be respected. They want to be loved.

We are all basically the same.

Dolly understood that.

In the days after she died, the tributes started coming in from everywhere. The Empire State Building sparkled pink. The King’s Guard played “9 to 5” outside Buckingham Palace. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tennessee, glowed in her honor. Then I saw a tribute from Iran.

That one really stopped me.

Everybody knew her for a different reason.

Some people knew the music. Some knew the movies. Some knew the hair, the breasts, the rhinestones, and the jokes. Others knew the woman who sent books to children, helped families after disasters, stood with LGBTQ people, and used what she had to make life better for people who had less.

Then the personal tributes started appearing.

Famous artists sang her songs, but so did everyday people sitting at home with a guitar. People painted pictures of her. They drew her face, shared their memories, told stories, and created their own little goodbyes.

Social media can be a really ugly place, but this was beautiful to witness.

Stars and everyday people were all doing the same thing. They were thanking her.

I honestly can’t imagine another person receiving this kind of worldwide farewell.

It wasn’t just a collection of accolades for a famous person. It felt personal. Millions of people seemed to be thanking someone who had made the world feel warmer, kinder, funnier, and more accepting simply by being in it.

She brought people together while she was alive. Somehow, in death, she did it again.

And, of course, there was “I Will Always Love You.”

A song the entire world already knew suddenly sounded different. It no longer felt like only a song Dolly had written.

It felt like the world answering her.

Grieving someone we never personally knew can feel strange, but it’s real. We don’t have to meet someone for that person’s life to touch ours. I didn’t have to know every Dolly Parton song to recognize what she brought into the world.

And we don’t have to come from the same country, culture, religion, background, or political reality to recognize love when we see it.

On the day Dolly died, I looked at that first rainbow and wondered whether it was for her or from her.

Maybe it was both.

I’m heartbroken that she’s gone. But more than anything, I’m grateful.

I’m grateful I lived in a world where she also lived.

I can look at almost any photograph I’ve taken while traveling and remember exactly where I was.

Not just the country or the city.

I remember the street. I remember the weather. I remember the people around me. I remember how I was feeling. Sometimes I even remember what happened right before I took the picture or where I went afterward.

That’s what photographs can do.

They capture a split second, hold onto it, and then return it to you years later.

You look at a picture and suddenly you’re right back there.

I remember standing there.

I remember looking down and seeing those words written in chalk:

Keep Love Alive.

Someone else might have walked right past it. Someone probably stepped over it without ever looking down.

But I stopped.

That’s what I do.

I notice the things people leave behind—the writing on walls, chalk on sidewalks, fading hearts and messages written by people I will never meet.

I take a picture because something about the message catches me at that particular moment.

Then, years later, it catches me again.

When I look at this photograph, I don’t just see the words. I see my shoes at the bottom of the frame. I remember standing there in Central Park.

I was part of that moment.

I think that’s one reason I photograph so much street art. It isn’t only the artwork that interests me. It’s the experience of finding it.

You turn a corner and there it is—a message you weren’t expecting to see.

In Sicily, I came across the words Tourists Go Home painted on a crumbling yellow wall.

There was something a little funny about photographing it as a tourist. But it also made me stop and think.

Travel is complicated.

We arrive somewhere because we want to experience it, but people are already living there. Their streets aren’t attractions. Their homes aren’t backdrops. Their lives continue after we leave.

That photograph reminds me of Sicily, but it also reminds me that traveling isn’t only about seeing beautiful things.

Sometimes you find something uncomfortable.

Sometimes the place speaks back to you.

A few days later in Catania, I found another message:

No one is free until all are free.

This time, I put myself in the photograph.

I remember seeing that wall. I remember standing beside those words. I remember deciding that I didn’t want a picture of just the message. I wanted to be in it.

I wanted to show that I had been there.

That’s what travel is made of—small moments and unexpected things you find along the way.

They may not seem that important when they happen, but later they become part of the story.

I’ve found messages like these all over the world.

Love the life you live. Live the life you love.

Some are painted carefully. Others look as if someone sprayed them onto a wall in about thirty seconds. Some are already disappearing by the time I find them.

The wall may be painted over now. The building may be gone. The chalk probably disappeared with the next rain.

But I have the photograph.

And I remember exactly where I was.

Then there are photographs that mean something different when you look at them later.

When I first stood in front of this wall of puzzle pieces, I was drawn to the colors. I liked the way the pieces connected. I took the picture and continued with my day.

When I look at it now, I see something else.

I see life.

I think a lot of us move through life looking for the last few pieces that will make everything feel complete.

We think the next destination might be the missing piece. Or the next job. The next relationship. The next opportunity. The next version of ourselves.

We keep moving because we think something out there will finally make the whole picture make sense.

But maybe the journey isn’t about finishing the puzzle.

Maybe the journey is the puzzle.

Every place I’ve visited has given me something. Every person I’ve met has left something behind. Every disappointment, wrong turn, beautiful morning, lonely night and unexpected act of kindness has become another piece.

Some pieces fit immediately.

Others don’t make sense until years later.

And maybe there will always be a few empty spaces.

I turned 60 this year, and I’m beginning to understand that an unfinished life isn’t necessarily an incomplete life.

Maybe it just means there is still room for something else to happen.

There are still places I haven’t seen.

There are still people I haven’t met.

There are still photographs I haven’t taken.

And there are still pieces I haven’t found.

Some photographs stay with me because the words become even more meaningful later.

In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope.

I don’t know who painted those words. I don’t know what was happening in that person’s life when they chose them.

But I know why I stopped.

Hope isn’t always easy. There are days when the world gives us plenty of reasons to lose it.

But we keep going.

We keep traveling. We keep searching. We keep believing that there is still something good waiting around the next corner.

Maybe that’s another reason I photograph these walls.

They remind me that people everywhere are asking many of the same questions.

How do we live?

How do we love?

How do we stay hopeful?

How do we figure out where we belong?

The language may change. The streets may look different. But the search is pretty much the same.

We’re all walking around with our own collection of puzzle pieces, trying to figure out what the final picture is supposed to look like.

When I look through my photographs, I’m not just looking at the places I’ve visited.

I’m looking at the pieces of my life.

A wall in Sicily. Chalk in Central Park. A mural I found while walking down a street I had never seen before. A message left by someone whose name I’ll never know.

Every photograph reminds me of where I was.

But it also reminds me of who I was at that point in my life—and who I was becoming.

The puzzle isn’t finished yet.

And honestly, I’m glad it isn’t.

The Lady Gaga Concert That Took Me to Japan

I was supposed to see Lady Gaga in Las Vegas.

Then COVID happened, and like so many other plans during that time, the concert never happened.

Years later, while I was traveling through Asia, I decided to check her concert schedule. There wasn’t any big plan behind it. I was just curious about where she was performing.

And there it was.

Osaka, Japan.

I had never been to Japan, but I had always wanted to go. Suddenly, I had the perfect reason to add another country to my trip.

So I bought the ticket and changed my route.

That is one of the things I love about traveling independently. The itinerary doesn’t have to be set in stone. Sometimes an entire country gets added because of one concert, one invitation, or one unexpected opportunity.

I don’t particularly believe in “someday.”

Someday isn’t a date you can put on a calendar. It doesn’t buy an airline ticket, reserve a hotel room, or get you onto an airplane. Someday is often where we put the things we want to do when we aren’t ready to make them happen.

I had wanted to visit Japan for years, but wanting to go wasn’t going to get me there.

Finding that concert gave me a reason to stop thinking about Japan and start making arrangements.

Just like that, Japan stopped being someday.

It became a date on my calendar.

The concert was the reason I went to Osaka, but Japan became much more than the backdrop for one night. It became another place I was fortunate enough to experience for myself—not through photographs, movies, or somebody else’s stories, but by actually being there.

We sometimes think travel needs to have some profound purpose behind it. It has to be educational, transformative, or part of a perfectly planned journey.

But joy is a reason.

Curiosity is a reason.

Wanting to see Lady Gaga is a perfectly good reason to go to Japan.

The Las Vegas concert never happened for me. Instead, years later, that plan found its way back into my life on the other side of the world.

It didn’t take me to Las Vegas.

It took me to Osaka.

Sometimes when a plan falls apart, it isn’t the end of the story.

Sometimes it is just waiting for a better destination.

When you travel, especially to a place like Venice, you know what you’re supposed to photograph.

The canals. The gondolas. St. Mark’s Square.

The Rialto Bridge.

I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve traveled to more than 60 countries, and like everybody else, I’ve taken thousands of photographs of the things you’re supposed to take photographs of.

But somewhere along the way, I started looking in a different direction.

Not all the time.

Just enough.

And those are often the photographs I remember.

I was on the Rialto Bridge when I saw her.

Think about that for a second.

You’re standing on one of the most famous bridges in the world. There are people everywhere taking pictures of Venice, taking selfies, looking out over the Grand Canal.

And I noticed her.

She was just sitting there on the steps.

I don’t know who she was. I don’t know where she was going or where she’d been. I don’t even know how long she had been sitting there.

But I took the photograph.

And all these years later, when I think about that moment, I don’t think about the bridge.

I think about her.

That’s what photography has become for me.

It’s not always about what I’m supposed to be looking at.

It’s about what I notice.

I do this everywhere.

I’ll be walking down a street and somebody catches my eye.

Maybe it’s the way they’re walking.

Maybe it’s what they’re carrying.

Maybe it’s their face.

Most of the time, absolutely nothing is happening.

And that’s the point.

These aren’t events.

They’re lives.

That woman with the cane wasn’t doing anything remarkable. She was going somewhere. That’s it.

But for whatever reason, I stopped.

I noticed her

Sometimes it’s even quieter than that.

A woman sitting behind a counter.

Light coming through a window.

Someone waiting for the next customer.

If you’re rushing, you walk right past it.

I’ve probably walked past thousands of photographs in my life.

We all have.

Because we’re always looking for the big thing.

I’ve learned that sometimes the big thing isn’t the thing at all.

Kids are different.

They notice everything.

And they notice you.

I’ve always loved photographing children when I travel because there’s very little pretending.

Sometimes they smile.

Sometimes they laugh.

Sometimes they just stare at you like this little boy did.

I don’t know his name.

I don’t know what became of him.

But I remember him.

And that’s strange when you think about it.

Two people can cross paths for a few seconds, never speak, probably never see each other again—and somehow one of them can stay with the other for years.

And sometimes they’re the ones who find you.

I love this photograph because I could have missed it so easily.

A couple of kids looking through openings.

That’s it.

No landmark.

No incredible landscape.

Nothing that would ever make a list of the things you have to see when you visit a country.

But look at their faces.

They were looking at me.

I was looking at them.

And for a few seconds, that was the whole world.

That’s probably what I love most about these photographs.

There’s a connection.

Sometimes it’s only a second.

Sometimes nobody says a word.

But there’s an acknowledgment.

I see you.

And maybe that’s what I’ve really been photographing all these years.

Not countries.

Not destinations.

People.

I’m 60 now.

Maybe that’s part of why I think about this differently than I used to.

I still want to see the world. There are still countries I want to visit and places I want to stand.

And yes, I’ll still take the photograph of the cathedral.

I’ll still photograph the mountain.

I’ll still photograph the sunset.

But I’m also going to look at the person sitting on the steps.

Because I’ve learned that the photographs that stay with me aren’t always the ones I went looking for.

They’re the ones I almost missed.

Photography has taught me to pay attention.

And the older I get, the more I realize that’s not really a lesson about photography.

It’s a lesson about living.

There is so much happening around us that we don’t see because we’re busy looking for something else.

So maybe the next time you’re walking somewhere—whether it’s Venice or the street you’ve walked down a thousand times—look in the other direction.

Slow down for a second.

Notice somebody.

Because maybe the photograph you almost miss isn’t the photograph at all.

It’s the person.

The photograph is only the last five seconds of the story.

People see a finished gallery. They scroll through an image, pause for a moment, maybe click “like,” and move on. What they don’t see are the hours that came before it.

This week I uploaded 32 photographs to my Fine Art America gallery.

That sentence takes less than three seconds to read.

The work took an entire day.

Before a single photograph could be uploaded, I had to find files spread across multiple countries and devices. Images from Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Laos, Panama, St. Croix, the Adirondacks, and countless other places had to be located, organized, downloaded, converted, renamed, and resized. Technology fought me almost every step of the way. Nothing seemed to work the first time.

It would have been easy to quit.

Social media has trained us to celebrate the finished product. We applaud the book, but never the thousand mornings spent writing it. We admire the business, but rarely think about the years it took to build. We enjoy the photograph without considering the flight, the long walk, the early alarm, the missed meals, or the countless images that never made the final cut.

We see outcomes.

We rarely see process.

I’ve realized that much of my life has been spent doing work that no one will ever notice.

The hours spent wandering unfamiliar streets before sunrise.

The notebooks filled with observations that never become essays.

The photographs that remain on hard drives because they aren’t quite right.

The videos that get deleted.

The websites that get redesigned.

The applications that never receive a response.

None of that is visible.

But without those invisible hours, none of the visible moments would exist.

The same is true for almost every meaningful thing in life.

Strong relationships are built in conversations no one else hears.

Healthy bodies are built in workouts no one applauds.

Character is built in decisions no one witnesses.

The world celebrates what can be seen.

Life is changed by what cannot.

As frustrating as this week has been, spending hours wrestling with technology reminded me of something important.

This is the work.

Not just the photograph.

Not just the gallery.

Not just the finished product.

The patient, repetitive, often frustrating work that quietly happens before anyone notices.

Maybe that’s where the real story has always been.

I’ve spent parts of my life living in places where millions of people call home.

New York City taught me to keep moving. It taught me that around every corner there was another story waiting to be discovered. I loved the energy, the diversity, and the feeling that anything could happen on any given day.

Los Angeles was different. It spread out instead of up. Life revolved around neighborhoods, beaches, freeways, and sunsets. It had its own rhythm, and before long I found myself moving to it.

For years, I thought those were the kinds of places that shaped a person.

Then I came to a town with 99 year-round residents.

Most of the homes here aren’t reached by car. They’re reached by boat. That alone tells you everything you need to know about life here.

The mornings begin quietly. The lake decides what kind of day it’s going to be. People wave because they know one another, not because they’re trying to be polite. At night, the stars put on a show that no city skyline can compete with.

It’s a completely different world.

People often ask me why I travel so much. The answer has always been simple: every place has something to teach you.

New York taught me to dream bigger.

Los Angeles taught me to reinvent myself.

The Adirondacks are teaching me to slow down.

None of those lessons are better than the others. They’re just different.

I’ve been fortunate to explore more than 60 countries, and I still believe the world is one of our greatest classrooms. But every now and then, life reminds me that you don’t have to cross an ocean to discover somewhere that changes you.

Sometimes, all it takes is a place with 99 people... and the willingness to slow down long enough to notice it.

The mountains. The beaches. The temples. The food. The countries whose names still sound a little unbelievable when I say them out loud.

Those things matter.

But after traveling through more than 60 countries, I have realized they are not always what stay with me the longest.

It is the people.

The ones I never planned to meet.

This summer, I have been working aboard a boat in the Adirondacks. Every trip brings a new group of passengers. Most of them I will probably never see again.

We exchange a few words. We share a laugh. I answer questions about the lake. Sometimes people tell me where they are from or where they have traveled. Then they step off the boat, continue with their vacation, and I prepare for the next group.

By every measure, these are temporary encounters.

And yet, somehow, they are not.

Over the past week, several passengers have recognized me through my writing and social media. One woman looked at me and said that I seemed familiar. Eventually, she realized she had been reading my Substack.

Someone else subscribed to No Passport Required after meeting me on the boat

There was something unexpectedly moving about that.

I was standing on a lake in the Adirondacks, talking to people I had never met, and realizing that our lives had already crossed before we ever stood face to face.

It made me think about all the other strangers who have quietly become part of my story.

I thought about my first night in Japan.

It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. I had just arrived after a long journey and was walking through unfamiliar streets, trying to find my Airbnb.

A woman noticed that I was lost.

She could have pointed down the street and continued on her way.

Instead, she walked with me.

For nearly ten minutes, she stayed beside me until we found the address and I was standing safely in front of the building.

We were strangers.

She expected nothing from me.

Yet on my first night in Japan, at two o’clock in the morning, she made a foreign country feel a little less foreign.

I still think about her willingness to go above and beyond.

Then I think about Cambodia. A couple memories stuck out.

One afternoon I struck up a conversation with two women from America as I wandered through town. It was one of those travel conversations that starts with a simple hello and somehow turns into an hour of stories, recommendations, and laughter. Then we went our separate ways, fully expecting that to be the end of it.

Six weeks later, halfway across our own separate journeys, our paths crossed again. This time we shared dinner, caught each other up on where the road had taken us, and laughed about the odds of meeting twice in a world this big. By the next morning, we were once again heading in different directions.

That’s what I love about travel. Most of the people you meet aren’t meant to become lifelong friends. They’re simply meant to be part of your story for a chapter—a few hours, an evening, maybe a shared meal. Those brief connections remind us that home isn’t always a place. Sometimes it’s the feeling of belonging, even if only for a moment, with someone you never expected to meet.

I was walking through a neighborhood when I passed a family gathered outside their home. They were celebrating together, talking, laughing, and enjoying the evening.

I did not know them.

I had not been invited.

I was simply walking past.

But they waved me over.

They offered me a chair and a beer and welcomed me into their celebration as though my arrival had been expected.

The next night, they invited me to sit with them again.

Then they did it again the night after that.

Every evening, when I passed by, they made room for me.

For a little while, halfway around the world, I found myself sitting outside with a Cambodian family, sharing beers, laughter, and conversations that did not always require words to be understood

I was no longer just a stranger walking through their neighborhood.

They had made me part of it.

That is the part of travel people rarely talk about.

Not the monuments. Not the photographs,

Not the number of countries visited.

The moments when someone who owes you nothing offers you directions, a chair, a beer, a conversation, or simply a place beside them.

Those moments never appear on an itinerary.

You cannot book them.

You cannot predict them.

You simply have to be present enough to notice when they arrive.

Maybe that is what travel has taught me more than anything else.

The scenery changes, the language changes, the currency changes. But people are still just people.

Sometimes kindness looks like a woman walking beside you through the streets of Japan at two o’clock in the morning.

Sometimes it looks like a Cambodian family pulling up a chair and handing you a beer.

And sometimes it looks like a stranger stepping onto a boat in the Adirondacks and telling you that they have been reading your stories.

We spend so much time planning where we are going that we forget how much of life is shaped by the people we meet along the way.

Some conversations last ten minutes.

Some friendships cross continents.

Some people remain in our lives.

Others disappear almost as quickly as they arrived.

But that does not make the encounter meaningless.

Sometimes the people who stay with us the longest are the ones whose names we never knew

This week, I stood on a boat in the Adirondacks talking with people who, just hours earlier, had been strangers.

Earlier this year I stood on a quiet street in Japan beside a woman I would never see again.

In Cambodia, I sat outside night after night sharing beers with a family who welcomed me as though I belonged there.

Different countries. Different languages, Different Cultures. The same lesson.

The people you were never supposed to meet often become the ones you remember the longest.

There are moments in history that invite us to look backward. America’s 250th anniversary is one of them.

For me, it also became a reason to look inward.

This year, I turned sixty. A few months ago, I returned to the United States after spending months living in Southeast Asia. Those two milestones arrived close together, and somewhere between them I realized that the greatest journey I took wasn’t across an ocean. It was the one that changed the way I think about home.

Growing up, “home” was something I rarely questioned. It was simply where I happened to be. Like most people, I took the familiar for granted because I had never known anything else.

Only after leaving did I begin to see it differently.

Standing in markets in Cambodia, watching boats drift through Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, and sharing meals with strangers who quickly became friends, I discovered that every country has its own rhythm, its own beauty, and its own definition of what it means to belong.

When I returned to the United States, I found myself spending the summer in the Adirondacks.

I had never lived here before, yet the quiet mornings on the lake, the fog drifting across the water, and evenings that seemed to slow time itself reminded me that beauty isn’t limited to the places we travel. Sometimes it’s waiting patiently for us to notice it.

After months overseas, I realized it wasn’t just this place I was seeing differently.

I was seeing my own country differently.

Travel has a way of doing that. It doesn’t erase where you came from. It simply gives you another perspective from which to see it.

Living abroad didn’t make me love America less.

It made me appreciate it differently.

Not because it’s perfect. No country is.

But because distance has a remarkable way of revealing what familiarity often hides.

The older I get, the less interested I am in deciding which place is “better.”

Instead, I’m fascinated by what each place teaches me.

Some places teach patience.

Some teach gratitude.

Some teach simplicity.

Others remind you where your roots began.

Every country I’ve visited has left something behind that I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.

People sometimes ask me why I keep traveling.

The answer has become surprisingly simple.

I don’t travel to escape home.

I travel to understand it.

Every passport stamp, every conversation, every sunrise, and every unfamiliar street has quietly reshaped the way I see the familiar ones waiting for me back home.

Somewhere along the way, my definition of home changed.

Home is still America. It always will be. It’s where my story began.

But after crossing oceans, living in Southeast Asia, and finding kindness in places I had never been before, I realized something I never expected.

I don’t just feel at home in one country anymore.

I feel at home in the world.

That doesn’t diminish where I came from.

It honors what the journey has given me.

The greatest gift travel has given me wasn’t another passport stamp.

It was the realization that the world can feel familiar, even when it’s completely new.

Maybe that’s what America’s 250th anniversary made me realize.

Sometimes the best way to appreciate where you began is to leave for a while, remain curious, and return carrying a little more of the world with you.

I found out a family member had died while I was scrolling.

No phone call. No message. Just a post, like everything else on a feed that never really stops moving.

There’s something about learning news like that through a screen that doesn’t quite land at first. Your thumb keeps moving before your mind catches up. And then it does catch up—and everything feels strangely normal around something that is anything but.

I didn’t know what to do with it, so I stopped scrolling.

Later, I went back to something I had made years ago.

I was living in St. Croix at the time. I remember the heat more than anything—the way it didn’t let you forget where you were. I had done a small photo story then called Diary of a Tree.

It was just one tree.

Not a forest. Not a landscape. Just a single tree I kept returning to with my camera, as if it was changing and I needed to catch it before I missed it.

At the time, I thought I was documenting resilience.

I thought I was documenting survival.

But looking at it now, I’m not sure that’s what I was really seeing.

Because life has a way of changing the meaning of things after the fact.

What felt like endurance then feels different now.

There’s a version of that tree I remember most clearly—it was standing alone against a wide sky, the kind of frame that makes you think something is permanent just because it’s still there in the moment you’re looking at it.

We like to believe things stay.

We like to believe people stay.

But time doesn’t really work that way.

Now my mother is the last surviving sibling.

That’s a sentence that doesn’t feel real when you say it out loud. It just sits there quietly, asking you to carry more than you feel prepared to carry.

And I think about that tree again.

Still standing.

Still there.

But different now in my mind than it was when I first photographed it.

Maybe that’s what photographs actually are. Not frozen moments—but living ones. Things that change as we change. Things that wait for us to catch up to them.

I don’t know if I was photographing a tree back then.

I think I was just trying to understand what it means for something to remain when everything around it eventually doesn’t.

After living in thirteen states and traveling to more than sixty countries, I began to wonder if the hardest place to live was the one I was already in.

I’ve lived in thirteen states.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to travel to more than sixty countries.

I’ve watched the sun set over the Pacific, stood in the silence of the desert near Death Valley, wandered through tropical islands, explored the mountains of Alaska, and now spend my summers in the Adirondacks. Along the way, I’ve found places I genuinely loved.

Most people assume that after seeing so much of the world, you eventually discover the place where you belong.

My experience has been almost the opposite.

For years, I believed the next move might finally be the one. Another state. Another country. Another city. Another adventure. I kept thinking the answer was somewhere just beyond the horizon.

The problem is that when you’re always looking ahead, you never fully arrive where you already are.

Travel has given me more than I ever imagined. It has introduced me to extraordinary people, unforgettable landscapes, and moments I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. It has made the world feel smaller and, somehow, made me feel more connected to it.

But it also changed the way I experience place.

I don’t just miss one home anymore.

I miss many.

I miss quiet mornings in Cambodia, where a simple lunch or a conversation with a familiar face could make an ordinary day feel complete.

I miss walking through the streets of Vietnam, where every corner held another story waiting to unfold.

Some days I miss the energy of New York City. Other days it’s the stillness of the Adirondacks, the endless skies of Alaska, or the sound of waves somewhere in the Caribbean.

Each place left something behind.

Each place still calls to me.

That’s the strange thing about a life built around movement. You don’t stop loving the places you’ve left. They continue traveling with you.

I’ve learned to feel at home in many corners of the world.

The downside is that part of me is almost always wondering where I’ll go next.

It’s a wonderful way to live.

It’s also an exhausting one.

These days, I’m beginning to wonder if home isn’t a place at all. Maybe it’s something we carry with us. Maybe it’s found in familiar routines, meaningful conversations, the people we meet, or simply learning to be fully present wherever we happen to be.

I don’t know if I’ve answered that question yet.

As much as I love travel, sometimes I think it has made it harder to stay still. Every place I love reminds me of another place I miss.

Maybe that’s the price of building a life around curiosity.

Or maybe it’s simply the reality that once the world becomes your neighborhood, no single address can ever hold all of your heart.

I’m still learning how to live with that.

And maybe that’s okay

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I came to the Adirondacks for work.

Like most jobs, I figured I’d do my time, collect a paycheck, take some photos, and move on.

Instead, I found a story.

Not on the set of The Gilded Age. Not in one of the Great Camps. Not in a museum.

I found it on a boat.

Every evening, visitors climb aboard the W.W. Durant and head out onto Raquette Lake. As the shoreline drifts by, they hear stories about the lake, its history, and the families who helped shape this corner of the Adirondacks.

The voice they hear belongs to the man who built the business.

When he passed away, his family faced a question that every family business eventually faces.

How do you continue when the person who started it is gone?

Their answer was simple.

They kept his voice.

Today, passengers still hear his narration as the W.W. Durant moves across the water. His stories still welcome visitors aboard. His knowledge still guides people through places he loved.

Most family businesses pass down equipment, buildings, or traditions.

This one passed down a voice.

And in a way, that’s what history really is.

Not old buildings. Not photographs. Not television shows.

It’s the stories people leave behind and the people willing to keep telling them.

Most people leave behind photographs.

Some leave behind buildings.

A few leave behind stories.

Every evening, as the W.W. Durant pulls away from the dock, a father still welcomes guests aboard.

Not in person.

But close enough.

And maybe that’s what legacy really is.

Not being remembered once in a while.

But continuing to be part of everyday life long after you’re gone.

Raquette Lake, New York

A week ago I was on an overnight film shoot running on caffeine and very little sleep.

The next morning I was driving north to Raquette Lake for a summer job in the Adirondacks.

Life has a funny way of changing directions when you keep saying yes.

I didn’t come here looking for a story. I came here for work.

But every new place begins somewhere.

This one began with a red door.

A cabin in the woods.

A backpack on my shoulder.

And rain.

Lots of rain.

The first couple days weren’t what I expected. I thought I’d be out exploring every trail, chasing sunrises, and trying to see everything at once. Instead, the weather had other plans.

So I slowed down.

I watched deer wander through the property like they owned the place.

I stood in the rain looking out over the marsh and wondered how I ended up here.

Not in a bad way.

Just one of those moments where life feels a little surreal.

A month ago I was in Cambodia.

Before that I was crossing borders, figuring out trains, airports, and languages I didn’t speak.

Now I’m looking out a cabin window in the Adirondacks.

The Cambodia hat sitting on the windowsill made me laugh. It felt like a reminder of just how quickly life can change.

For now, the backpack is unpacked.

The bed is made.

The cabin is home.

At least for this chapter.

I don’t know exactly what the summer will bring.

More stories, hopefully.

New people.

Long days.

Maybe a few adventures.

But on that rainy afternoon, stretched out on a bed with the sound of rain outside the window, I wasn’t thinking about any of that.

I was just grateful.

Grateful for work.

Grateful for another opportunity.

Grateful for another chapter.

And grateful to have a place to put my bag down for a while.

A month ago, I was still in Asia.

Seven months had passed almost without me noticing. One country became another. New foods, new languages, new routines. Every few weeks there was another bus, another flight, another place to figure out.

For seven months, movement became normal.

Then suddenly I was back in New York.

Not because I was finished traveling.

I’ve spent the last month settling back into familiar places, reconnecting with family, and trying to find a rhythm again.

The strange part is that while I’ve enjoyed being home, I am already feeling the pull of what’s next.

The funny thing about coming home is that sometimes it doesn’t feel the way you imagined it would.

Not because it’s bad.

Just different.

I’ve spent the last month catching up with friends, taking photographs, working on projects I’ve put off , and trying to figure out what comes next.

The Adirondacks are waiting. June 6th I will be at my new location for summer and fall.

A few days of filming The Gilded Age are coming up.

There are new ideas I want to pursue, new places I want to visit

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Part of me is settling back into New York.

Part of me is already looking down the road.

Maybe that’s why I’ve spent so much time in the woods lately.

No itinerary.

No airport.

No destination.

Just a trail.

The same trails I’ve walked for years somehow look different now. Or maybe I’m the one who looks different.

A bird on the path.

A flower I might have walked past before.

Water moving over stone.

The moon appearing before the day is finished.

Small things.

The kind of things that don’t ask for attention but reward it.

Travel taught me to notice those things.

Being home reminds me not to stop.

For now, I’m somewhere between the life I just lived and the one that’s beginning to take shape.

Not quite staying.

Not quite leaving.

Just here.

Between here and there.

Long enough to remember different faces. Different stages of the fight. Different cities. Different fears.

And walking through Central Park this weekend with a camera around my neck, it felt familiar in a way that’s hard to explain.

Not nostalgic exactly.

Just… familiar.

There were volunteers setting up before most of the city was awake. Pride flags laying in the grass. Groups taking team photos. People hugging friends they maybe only see once a year at this event.

Some people were there to celebrate.

Some were there to remember.

Most were carrying a little bit of both.

Rosie Perez spoke during the opening ceremony, and seeing her there reminded me how long some people have continued to show up, year after year, when the cameras leave and attention moves on. That consistency matters.

At one point I looked around and realized how many generations were standing in the same space.

Older activists who lived through the worst years.

Younger people who inherited the responsibility to keep caring.

And somewhere in the middle are people like me — documenting it, remembering parts of it, trying not to forget how many lives and stories exist underneath an event like this.

One of my favorite moments wasn’t even on stage.

It was running into another photographer I’ve known through this walk for more than 30 years. We took a quick photo together, but what hit me afterward was the realization that we’ve both spent decades watching this event evolve while somehow still remaining part of it.

That stayed with me all day.

The walk itself is loud and joyful and crowded and colorful.

But underneath all of that is memory.

You can feel it.

In the faces. In the signs. In the people holding photos. In the names people still carry with them.

By the end of the day I wandered over near the Imagine mosaic in Central Park where flowers had been left behind by strangers.

Quiet after all the noise.

And honestly, it felt like the perfect ending.

Not dramatic.

Just human.

I think I forgot what quiet felt like.

Not complete silence. Just… quiet in my body.

The last year has been constant movement.

Sixteen countries. Cambodia. Thailand. Laos. Vietnam. Malaysia. Korea. Japan. Mexico. Canada. Germany. Austria. Italy.Turkey Croatia. Montenegro. Bosnia-Hersogovina. Airports. Border crossings. Night buses. Layovers. Trying to figure out where I’m sleeping next. Trying to build something while moving through the world at the same time.

And honestly, I think I came home more exhausted than I realized.

Not physically exhausted. That deeper kind.

The kind where your brain never fully shuts off. Mine never does.

So this week I started walking again.

Not for content. Not for steps. Not because it’s “healthy.” Just because I needed to get outside.

And somewhere between the waterfalls and the geese protecting their babies I felt something in me calm down a little.

Not fixed. Just quieter.

I sat near the water longer than I planned to. Started noticing little things again. Trees split open with age and still growing. Tiny green leaves coming out of dead-looking bark. Baby geese stumbling around trying to keep up with their parents.

And I realized how long it’s been since I stopped moving long enough to actually feel where I was.

That’s the weird thing about travel.

People think movement heals everything.

Sometimes it does.

But sometimes you just carry yourself into another country.

And sometimes healing looks less like getting on another plane and more like sitting near water without checking your phone every five seconds.

I didn’t expect nature back home to hit me this hard after spending so much time overseas.

But maybe your body recognizes safety before your brain does.

Maybe that’s why people go sit near oceans after heartbreak. Why forests make people emotional. Why water slows something down inside us.

I don’t know.

I just know this week felt like the first deep breath I’ve taken in a while.

And right now, that’s enough.

No Passport Required is about movement, observation, and the small moments that reconnect us — to the world, to other people, and sometimes back to ourselves.

I used to think 60 would feel old.

Not because of the number. Because of the picture I had in my head growing up.

I thought by this age life would feel settled. Certain. Permanent.

Instead, I’m sitting here after traveling across the world for seven months trying to figure out sleep schedules, phone problems, work schedules, editing photos, money, purpose, and what the next chapter even looks like.

And honestly?

That feels a lot more alive than the version of aging I imagined when I was younger.

There’s something strange about getting older.

Your body changes. Your recovery changes. Your patience changes.

But parts of you stay exactly the same.

I still get excited boarding planes. Still stop for light hitting a wall. Still notice people sitting alone. Still believe a conversation with a stranger can change your day. Still feel the pull to keep moving.

At 20, I thought aging meant becoming someone different.

Now I think aging is becoming more of who you already were underneath all the noise.

The older I get, the less interested I am in pretending.

I don’t need perfect anymore. I need honest.

And honest is this:

Sometimes I feel incredibly free. Sometimes I feel completely lost. Sometimes I feel grateful I made it this far at all.

Because not everybody does.

There are moments now where I understand time differently.

I see younger travelers racing through countries collecting locations like trophies, and I understand it — I probably did parts of that too.

But eventually travel stops being about escape.

It becomes about attention.

About sitting still long enough somewhere to notice how people live. How they eat. How they gather. How they care for each other. How loneliness looks in different languages. How joy does too.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped needing every place to impress me.

Now I just want places to teach me something.

Turning 60 doesn’t feel like an ending to me.

It feels like standing in the middle of the story realizing how much of life was never about arriving anywhere.

It was about learning how to keep becoming.

And maybe that’s the part nobody tells you when you’re younger:

You can still rebuild your life at 60. You can still change direction. You can still fall apart and put yourself back together differently. You can still surprise yourself.

I don’t have everything figured out.

But I’ve lived enough now to know this:

A meaningful life rarely looks clean while you’re inside of it.

Sometimes it looks like missed flights. Wrong turns. Long nights. Reinvention. Starting over. Learning new skills at an age when people expect you to slow down.

Sometimes it looks like leaving the country for seven months and coming home realizing you’re not the same person who left.

And maybe that’s the point.

Not staying the same.

Just staying open long enough for life to keep working on you.

I thought getting home would be simple.

Book the flight.

Get on the plane.

Land in New York.

That’s what it’s supposed to look like.

But nothing about this felt simple.

What should have been a normal trip turned into 65 hours of moving, waiting, rerouting, and figuring it out in real time. Airports blurred together. Time zones stopped making sense. Sleep came in short, broken pieces—if it came at all.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I stopped thinking about “getting home” and just focused on getting to the next step.

Next flight.

Next gate.

Next decision.

That’s what travel really is sometimes—not the highlight reel, not the perfect shots, not the sunsets. Just figuring it out as you go.

There were moments I questioned everything.

Why leave?

Why now?

Why put myself through this?

And then there were the quiet moments—the ones that don’t show up on camera—where I realized something simple:

I wasn’t just traveling back to a place.

I was transitioning back into a version of my life I hadn’t lived in months.

That part hits harder than the jet lag.

Because when you’ve been moving, exploring, building something new…

coming back doesn’t feel like a reset.

It feels like a shift.

I’m not the same person who left.

And maybe that’s the point.

This trip—this chapter—was never just about where I was going.

It was about what I was building, what I was learning, and what I was becoming along the way.

Even when it’s messy.

Even when it’s exhausting.

Even when it takes 65 hours to get home.

I made it back.

And now the question isn’t “what was that trip?”

It’s what do I do with it?

If you’ve ever had a travel day like this… you get it.

And if you haven’t yet — it’s coming.

Subscribe if you want the real version of travel, not just the highlight reel

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I was supposed to be leaving.

The ticket was booked.

The route was set.

The timing made sense.

And then it didn’t.

Canceled.

No warning that mattered.

No explanation that helped.

Just… gone.

And suddenly I’m here again —

not by choice,

but not entirely against it either.

That space in between —

that’s the part no one talks about.

Travel isn’t just movement.

It’s interruption.

It’s adjustment.

It’s realizing how little control you actually have.

You can plan everything.

You can line it up perfectly.

And still — one decision, somewhere far away,

changes everything.

Flights disappear.

Prices triple.

Routes reroute through places you don’t trust.

And you’re left standing still

when you thought you’d be moving.

I felt it.

The frustration.

The exhaustion.

That moment where it all feels like too much.

Not just the flight —

everything around it.

The heat.

The lack of sleep.

The tech not working.

The constant figuring things out.

It builds.

And then you realize something else.

You’re still here.

Still walking the same streets.

Still seeing the same faces.

Still in a place you chose at one point —

even if you didn’t choose this exact moment.

There’s a strange honesty in that.

Being stuck forces you to see differently.

Not as a visitor.

Not as someone passing through.

But as someone… present.

No next step yet.

No movement to focus on.

Just where you are.

And maybe that’s part of it too.

Travel isn’t only about going somewhere.

Sometimes it’s about being held in place long enough

to actually notice where you are.

I’ll leave soon.

One way or another, I’ll leave.

But for now —

this is the space between staying and going.

And it counts.

It all happens on the same street.

Before the sun goes down, it’s quiet.

Tables set. Lights warming up.

People easing into the night.

Then the kids show up.

They don’t wait to be invited.

They step into it like it belongs to them.

Water guns. Powder. Laughter.

They see the camera and don’t hesitate.

They want to be seen.

A few blocks over, the same faces are carrying crates.

Powder in plastic bottles.

Strapped across their shoulders.

Moving through the crowd instead of playing in it.

No one stops them.

No one really looks.

The street fills in.

Water everywhere.

Music louder than conversation.

People pressed shoulder to shoulder.

Security moves through the edges.

Watching. Managing. Keeping things in place.

Up front, the stage takes over.

Lights. Screens. Branding.

Something bigger than the street itself.

And just off to the side, away from the noise,

someone is still cooking over an open fire.

Same night.

Same street.