Reflections on World Travel
Globetrotters Writer Spotlight — Daniel Carlson
A meandering naturist sets out to see the world
Hi Globetrotters. My name is…
Daniel Carlson. Married for nearly four decades, father of three lovely young adults, music professor, train buff, dog-lover, and oh… my wife and I are naturists. We were born in California; moved to the east coast for graduate school and never looked back.
I love to travel because…
All of it! The crazy of the airport. The anticipation of boarding a train. Amazing food and wine in a little bistro on a back alley in Provence. Not realizing you’re lost wandering the streets in Phuket. I’m an insatiable travel junkie who will fly just about any place for the thrill of the chase. All the better if there’s a spa or nude beach at the other end.
My number one travel activity is…
Naturism. I’ve been blogging about that for a long time and we raised our children on nakations in France. I’m also a mileage runner, which means I’ll fly someplace just to top up my status for the following year. (The Points Guy is my hero!) As I write this, we’re preparing to go to the airport for a week of nakation on the Balearic Islands, then off to a music festival in Latvia. (I go to a lot of those, too. Occupational hazard.)
I come from…
My wife and I were both born in California; moved to the east coast for graduate school and never looked back. We moved to New Jersey when the kids were little so I could pursue graduate school. Now we own two acres in rural Pennsylvania where I suspect we’ll stay until they take us away. We did live in Provence for a year about ten years ago. I could spin many a yarn on that topic that would make your teeth fall out, but alas… but not in French!
I work as a…
I’m a music professor. Or more specifically, a choral director. A nice perk of my job is building projects that involve student travel, which provides additional excuses to travel the world over and beyond my obsession with naturist travel.
The best place I’ve been is…
I really don’t like this question. It’s sort of like, “What’s your favorite food?” or “What’s your favorite piece of music?” That said, there’s a little island off the South of France called Ile du Levant. We visit pretty much every year. It’s not for everyone, but for us, it’s become our personal Nirvana.
In my spare time, I like to…
Write about my travel experiences. (!?!) Walk in the woods. Read on the back porch. And think about how the world might be a better place if people would talk less and travel more. I just wrote a piece called The Train Station Game about sitting quietly in a foreign place with the singular objective of taking everything in around you. We could all benefit from that.
My top travel tip is…
Don’t be a tourist. Be a traveler. Seek out the places where the locals go. I mean, really off the track. Skip Paris and Lyon in favor of a little town on the Arcachon Basin in France, or a small village on the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro. Not to beat a dead horse, but naturism lends itself well to this.
If I could live somewhere else, I’d live in…
We’ve thought about moving to France. That’s sort of a no-brainer. I think Thailand is alluring as well, but my wife says it’s too damn hot. There’s also a funky little beach town in Mexico called Zipolite. I think I could make a nice life there!
My favorite way to travel is…
Hard to beat flying if you get upgraded! But if not, I love a good train ride. Have taken Amtrak coast to coast at least a half-dozen times. And a couple of years ago we took one of those luxury trains from Zimbabwe to Pretoria. That was amazing. Train travel is romantic at best, story-inducing at least.
Three lessons I’ve learned from traveling are…
- I’m not that important. In fact, outside of my own little circle, I’m not really important at all. (With all due deference to my wife, children, and dog.) But in the grand scheme of things, I have more to gain from listening than I do from talking. That’s pretty ironic coming from a college professor, don’t you think?
- You can’t be lost if you don’t know where you are. The more lost you can get, the better.
- Despite my frustrations with some of the people who share my identity as a US citizen, I have found there are good humans, and unkind humans, all over the globe. If you’re really a committed “traveler,” chances are you’re going to bump into more lovely people than you normally would in your day-to-day existence. I love that.
I write about naturism, travel, and other parts of the human experience simply for the joy of writing. Totally worth it. But every time somebody spends time reading one of my stories, I earn a few cents to help pay the overhead costs of being a blogger. It’s only a few dollars a month to subscribe to Medium, which gives you access to thousands of authors and their work. And if you subscribe by clicking through the link below, I receive an incentive for that as well. Support naturism and thoughtful writing. Subscribe to MEDIUM… below. :)