You perhaps know by now that the ever-expanding and astonishingly enchanted Vaughan House, where this cover feature is set, is located near Lynchburg, Virginia, off an unassuming road and nestled in the backyard of married couple Megan and Mitch Vaughan. What began as an impulse on Megan’s part to fill the couple’s yard with plants—with a whole greenhouse full of plants in the wake of a devastating miscarriage—then became a hugely popular and Instagram- worthy micro-wedding venue where the couple hosts ninety weddings a year. Now it has grown into something of a mini- empire. In fact, there’s a whole cottage back there too.

And by “cottage,” we mean this. Tower, winding stairway, and all.

It came about this way: In 2020, Mitch was on the Geographic Information System and realized the trees beside their house were owned by the couple. “Always fun to learn you have more land than you thought!” Megan says. They cut some of the trees to make the land easier to access. For a year, they enjoyed exploring and letting their kids play in the creek.

One day Mitch suggested building a small deck by the creek to put a rooftop tent on, a place to relax with the kids and maybe camp. He casually commented that such a place could work as a guest rental too. Megan proposed that this hypothetical space be “worthy enough for photographers to want to rent for photoshoots.” But wait, she said … “What about a stone cottage? 700 square feet max? Nothing big! Super small. One room, a tiny bathroom. Just enough for our greenhouse couples to get ready in and have a cozy honeymoon night …” And the idea spiraled from there. As Megan admits now, “I take something that could have been simple … to the extreme.” But how else does one end up with a 1,300-square-foot castle in one’s backyard?

And as you can see from our cover shoot, The Cottage, as it’s now officially called, and which was finished in 2024, when this shoot took place, is full of custom details—all dreamed up by Megan and Mitch and brought to life by a team of small artisans. Just a few of these include the custom hobbit door designed by the Vaughans and made by Jeremy Jessop of Lynchburg, with hinge work by Forged Commodities in Kyiv, Ukraine. The library was designed by the Vaughans and features cabinetry from Scott’s Cabinet in Forest, Virginia; live edge shelving by Black Dog Salvage in Roanoke, Virginia; and a ceiling hand-painted with ivy by Elizabeth Gray (who added ivy to the kitchen as well).

“Supporting small businesses was something we were incredibly passionate about when it came to designing the cottage,” Megan says. “So many of our followers ask for the blueprints, but there’s nothing special about those. What makes the cottage special is the many, many small businesses who saw our vision for it and blessed us with their incredible art and hard work. Without them, the cottage wouldn’t be what it is, have the charm that it has, and truly be one of a kind.”

When designing the cottage’s atrium, Megan knew exactly what she wanted. In fact, the entire main level was designed around this space and, very specifically, the gorgeous multi-colored leaf tile you see on the right, designed by Karen of MacMillan Aimes Studios and found by Megan on Pinterest. The entire process from the first email

to installation took about two years, with Karen handmaking each individual tile and creating a template for the installers to use. “The way she puzzle-pieced this together was actual genius,” Megan says. “It was truly a labor of love.”

Read more about The Cottage at vaughan-house.com/cottage.

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of a library.” —Jorge Luis Borges

I remember my first vision of the paradise Borges imagined. My teacher had taken us to the children’s library in Montreal’s Notre Dame de Grace neighborhood to sign up for our first library cards.

I was seven. At first glance an unlikely paradise, the library then occupied a small space in the community center that also housed the local swimming pool, all within earshot of the teeming Décarie Expressway.

I chose a book with pages and pages of cat pictures, including what I now know to be the Egyptian goddess Bastet and a white Persian cat I dreamed of owning. I have never owned a white Persian cat, but I think of that book almost every day. And I remember the librarian, her pink lipstick and honey-colored hair set in stiff waves above her shoulders, the way she spoke to children as equals and fellow book lovers.

That experience is stamped on my memory, the joy and magic of holding that book in my hand, of being surrounded by all those books (were there millions?) I couldn’t read. Before I’d ever learned to sound out words, the library was already heaven.

I didn’t learn to read until that summer, visiting my grandparents in Georgetown, Prince Edward Island. My grandmother was the school secretary, which also put her in charge of the school library—enough to make her a librarian in my eyes and thus even more beloved to me than she already was. She made it her mission to teach me to read, bringing home primers and easy readers to help me practice. Then she introduced me to Georgetown’s tiny public library, in a room upstairs from the redbrick post office and filled with vanilla scented, three-color illustrated treasure. By the time I returned to Montreal and the library near the expressway, I was checking out my limit of books each month. My love of libraries—and librarians—began in small rooms, with kind women, dedicated to children and books. It grew to encompass multiple paradises.

Nobody is sure what the oldest library in the world is or which library was first, although there are some candidates. The al-Qarawiyyin Library in Fez, Morocco, is said to be the longest continuously running library. It was founded in 859, though only opened to the public in 2017, thanks to the work of architect Aziza Chaouni. The legendary great library of Alexandria, Egypt, one of my childhood fascinations, was host to scholars from throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. Every claim about the library is controversial—from how many papyrus texts it held (40,000? 400,000?) to when it was

established (third or second century BCE?) to when and how it was destroyed. Still, its mythic legacy endures. In 2002, the Egyptian government founded a new Bibliotheca Alexandrina “dedicated to recapturing the spirit of openness and scholarship of the original” library.

Still, it was the establishment of public libraries that eventually opened the gates of paradise to seven-year-olds everywhere. The Biblioteca Palafoxiana in Puebla, Mexico, is the oldest public library in the Americas, founded in 1646 and housed in its present building since 1773. According to the American Library Association, the first public library in the United States is “in dispute.” Benjamin Franklin founded the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731, with access by subscription, but the ALA notes that the first free modern public library opened in 1833 in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The Boston Public Library was “the first free municipal library in a large community,” founded in 1848.

Public libraries have often been referred to as the “people’s palace,” a term used to describe libraries from New York to Kansas City to Birmingham, UK. The phrase is sometimes attributed to Andrew Carnegie, the morally complicated steel magnate and philanthropist who founded and helped support more than 2,500 public libraries in the U.S. and Canada, partly in memory of the library he frequented as a boy in Pittsburgh. Although I can’t find any evidence for this attribution, Carnegie did say, “There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the free public library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.” And he put his money where his mouth was, donating the funds for library buildings on the condition that communities raise taxes for upkeep and collections.

Carnegie money helped establish the Melrose Public Library in Massachusetts, where I worked through high school and college, shelving books in the glass-floored upper stacks, or at the front desk, where I came to know and love the library patrons: gentle Mr. Snow from Maine, who visited at least once a week; the gentleman from Edinburgh who looked a bit like Sean Connery and was reading his way through Sir Walter Scott; the sweet-faced young woman with her stack of Harlequin romances. I remember the librarians too: tough-talking, soft-hearted Marie, who waived everybody’s fines, and the two Dianes, one who knew everything about art and the other, my boss, whose smile and musical voice were the heart of the library.

At another Carnegie-funded library, the Somerville Public Library, I wrote my dissertation and first novel by a window that looked over hills and housetops and factories but not quite to the sea. As a young mother I took my children to story time. With Miss Anne and Miss Cathy, they learned to sing “Where Is Thumbkin?” and “The Eensy Weensy Spider,” took part in the summer reading program, and watched movies on the lawn in August. One October, Ellen in Reference planned a memorable Halloween party.

Paula Sakey, of the Boston Public Library Fund, notes that people have had first dates, gotten engaged, and even married at the city’s glorious Central Library—which offers $200 “equity weddings” so almost any patron can make use of the space. The library “lends itself to that kind of love,” she says, but also to the love of community, of humanity. Like many public libraries throughout the world, the Boston Public Library has social workers on staff and trains “empathetic” security workers to deal kindly with “housing-insecure patrons.” She calls the library an “antidote to the loneliness epidemic,” where you can sit in the beautiful Italianate courtyard—open to all—“and feel you’re not alone.”

Wherever I go, I look for the library. And when I’m there, I never feel alone. How can you be alone in paradise?

I’ve graded student papers in the Boston Athenæum, the subscription library once frequented by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with its fireplace and precious artworks. I’ve visited the original Winnie the Pooh toys at the New York Public Library and

hugged its famous stone lions, Patience and Fortitude. I’ve written essays like this one in the high-ceilinged reading room at Harvard. I cried for joy in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., just because I was there.

But paradise also exists in the libraries of small towns and city neighborhoods. Sometimes it’s at the center of everything, like the public library on the hillside above Littleton, New Hampshire, with its cozy children’s room and statue of Eleanor Porter’s Pollyanna. Sometimes it’s on a quiet street like the tiny two-room library twenty miles away in Lincoln, New Hampshire, presided over by a friendly librarian named Teasha. Maybe paradise sits by the river in the fishing community of Cardigan, Prince Edward Island, home to the smallest library in Canada, where loans are on the honor system. Or it could be in the North End neighborhood branch of the Boston Public Library, with its Italian language newspapers and marble relief of Dante Alighieri. Or maybe paradise travels through poor and rural communities in Mexico with the venerable Biblioteca Palafoxania’s mobile library project. Maybe paradise is a bookmobile in the Appalachian Mountains.

Where there are libraries, there’s no need to imagine paradise. It’s in a brick building near the expressway, next door to the public pool.

Regina M. Hansen is the author of the young adult novel The Coming Storm. Most days, you can find her in the library. Learn more at reginamhansen.com.

When art director Lisa Gill showed me an Instagram post about Castle Mont Rouge—an unfinished real-life castle with soaring spires that lives in the wilds of North Carolina, a castle-less state if there ever was one—I insisted we had to see it for ourselves. In fact, as the ladies with the most hands-on jobs in creating this enchantment-celebrating magazine, and as residents of North Carolina, as it happens, I felt it was our duty. Luckily, artist Robert Mihaly responded to my missive and agreed to show us his astonishing creation in person.

We thought we were visiting a Gothic folly, unusable and uninhabitable, the strange fever dream of a singular artiste. But though Mihaly built the structure nearly two decades ago and left it in semi-ruin, he’s now pouring endless vision, time, resources, and ingenuity into finishing it in a most elaborate fashion—and to make it presentable in time for his daughter’s Sweet Sixteen party next spring. He’s not only created but commissioned all manner of treasures to install this winter, including custom stained-glass windows (each with its own story) that he designed and two tractor-trailer loads of marble. Mihaly is a sculptor as well as castle-builder and has used all that gleaming and lustrous marble in carving sinks, balustrades, columns, coats of arms, a bathtub (!), and much, much more. There will also, he says, be “an absurd amount of inlaid marble.” Referring to the inlaid marble above, he says “dig this five-foot-diameter Gothic fantasy. In it I’ve used the most beautiful natural blue marble in the world, from Brazil.”

While Mihaly’s architecture is and will not be exclusively Gothic, it will be “infused with a vocabulary of canonical Gothic elements.” The gargoyles that peer from the exterior are portrayals of his great-grandfather Gregorius, “for the very explicit and Gothic purpose of scaring away evil spirits.” His window and door arches are not merely pointed but are built according to specific, strict Gothic geometries, he says: equilateral arches, quinto acuto arches, and double arches (or arches with radiuses that are double their width). The interior fountain will be at the end of a modest colonnade that will feature marble tracery.

And more important, he says, though “not yet so apparent” is his approach: “My spirit is similar to that of a Gothic castle or cathedral builder’s. The decorative ornaments will be imbued with meaning. Like Gothic builders of  old, I have bitten off  plenty for my modest means but consider myself to be working in the service of  higher purposes and ideals, reflected in soaring  forms, and later in all the finished surfaces.” He does not want to bore us (or you) with architectural minutiae, he says, but is “just saying I am constructing many intentional Gothic details. ’Tis my fate, gift, and curse.”

Since Mihaly’s castle is a story being written—and we, of course, are lovers of stories, castles, and everything gothic—we will be visiting Mihaly’s castle again in coming months to admire and possibly document his progress. We might even move in. Be on the lookout for future pieces from us filled with gothic treasures and perhaps even captures from a Sweet Sixteen celebration to end all Sweet Sixteen celebrations. We can’t wait to see what comes next.

Follow the castle’s progress on Instagram @castle_mont_rouge. See more of artist Robert Mihaly’s work at robertmihaly.com.

I’ve lived many places, but thus far Salem, Massachusetts, was the only one where no one ever asked where I’d come from. There are some places you inhabit, and there are some places that inhabit you. Every now and then the stars align and the two meet as one. I moved to Salem in the summer of 1995, knowing nobody in the area, with no leads on a place to live, my only income from a self-produced catalog of handcrafted gothic fashions founded a year prior. Arriving on a whim, my partner and I walked past quaint brick-walled shops on Essex Street with stained glass stars glinting in the windows, with Celtic strains of Loreena McKennitt and gentle clouds of intoxicating incense floating through the air. I read the names of the 1692 witch trial victims embedded in glowing crimson in the floor of the Salem Witch Museum, took in a larger-than-life painted mural of a witch gracefully overlooking her seaside domain at Salem Witch Village, and knew I’d found my new hometown. Sadly, there weren’t any affordable places to live available, and after spending weeks familiarizing ourselves with the area as our savings dwindled, my partner was ready to strike out somewhere else, saying it wasn’t meant to be.

But I felt in my core there must yet be a way and said it was worth one last shot. I wanted one more day to see if I could make something happen. We turned the car around, got out, and walked past one of the very first shops we’d visited on those cobblestone paths, perhaps now for the last time, and there it was: a small piece of paper on the door with a few simple handwritten words: “1 bedroom apartment available upstairs.” We went inside to inquire and the owner said the lease wouldn’t begin for a few weeks, but since no one was there we were welcome to move in immediately at no extra charge. He gave us two folding chairs so we’d have something to sit on and suddenly, we were home—a home where we’d live for the next twelve years. It was a labyrinthine brick building dating back to 1805, came complete with ghosts, and while no pets were technically allowed, several windows at night were silhouetted with incandescently backlit cats casting their noble shadows on the passersby below.

The web of fate began its weaving well before that, of course. Upon first arriving, we also explored the neighboring waterfront towns. One had a centuries-old, mist-enshrouded burial ground on a hilltop overlooking crashing waves below. I couldn’t resist doing some photography among the 17th and 18th century headstones carved by hand all those yesterdays ago with iconic winged souls, crossed bones, hourglasses, moons, and bats, each harkening us to remember and honor the fleeting nature of our given years. At one point, sitting on a stone bench atop the hillside, I carefully balanced my camera on a nearby stone after setting its self-timer, since no one else was around. The shop beneath what would become my home offered photo processing, and the film I’d shot was developed there. After getting the prints, I saw the bench had a name carved into the side. Weeks later when we magicked into that little apartment, the last name of the man who rented it to us? The same name. I later learned the bench was placed there in memory of his ancestors decades before.

Another charmed moment was when I picked up a copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables, only to read about one of the characters, the daguerreotypist, whose office was in the Salem Customs House in the 1800s. Why, yes, my apartment building was indeed the Salem Customs House, built in 1805, and he was writing about the very rooms I now occupied! Hawthorne himself often enjoyed spending time alone in Salem’s Old Burying Point, just around the corner from my apartment and a place I often strolled to for quiet time as well. The House of Seven Gables itself still stands in Salem like a shadowy specter nestled in lush greenery and flowers that appear all the more colorful against its blackened walls. On my first visit there, after telling a guide I’d just moved into town, he joked I wouldn’t really be able to call myself a local until I’d had a few hundred years of history there. I laughed, not knowing then something I’d learn years later about my maternal ancestry …

The cook at the pizza shop around the corner warned me that people in the area were hard to get along with at first, but once you did, you’d know it was genuine and be able to trust them fully. I could respect that and looked forward to growing those relationships. That said, I found the denizens of Salem to be extraordinarily welcoming and generous. Each new person I met felt like a piece of a magical family puzzle taking shape. Upon first meeting a local wizard with long flaxen hair, he handed me a dark amber bottle of pure clove essential oil as a gift. An apothecary across the street offered my partner an oil she blended with warm vanilla, amber, and Egyptian musk that cast the most comforting aura of scent. A jeweler named Bat crafted me an intricately beaded cobweb of a necklace in glistening black with pale violet accent beads that gleamed like the aurora borealis, and a delicate silver bat centerpiece. A witch with sparkling green eyes and knife-sharp black bobbed hair who owned the Black Cat Book Shop offered space to choreograph my first local fashion show. She even offered to take part in it as well, modeling one of my diaphanous gowns with lace-trimmed, dramatically flared sleeves, while holding out a ruby crystal goblet toward me in what was ultimately more ritual than show. In New England, “wicked” is a positive descriptor, and the people of Salem were truly wicked.

When people think of Salem, they can’t help but conjure images of autumn splendor. This makes sense in a town where Halloween isn’t a night so much as a month. It’s a time of year when the heightened energy of magic fills the air and pumpkin-everything abounds. We’d choreograph and perform dramatic vignette-style fashion shows in Salem’s historic Old Town Hall for Madame Tracy’s annual Vampires & Victims Ball, as our models glided effortlessly past in ethereal veils and gowns that seemed to flow on forever, sparkling like stars on the darkened stage. Sometimes I spent sleepless October nights burning the candle at both ends, crafting velvet capes and other finery for the Broom Closet, an enchanting little shop that was kind enough to make space for showcasing my designs destined to bedeck both visitors and acolytes alike who’d be lined up outside their door mere hours later. These crowds, newly clad in their crushed velvet capes, charmed amulets, and feathered hats, would usher thoughtfully past the nearby memorial stones etched with tragic yet eerily empowered final words of those who were suspended from trees and crushed by stones, those whose betrayed lives were cut short yet never forgotten. Sometimes we’d host guests from faraway lands on those chaotic October days, and they’d invariably be awakened by the sudden sound of shouting in the streets, and we’d quickly reassure them it was simply someone being accused of witchcraft—only this time by actors luring tourists to a nearby performance.

For a local though, there was a special kind of magic to the days after Halloween, when all went suddenly quiet after the tourists disappeared back to their everyday lives. Salem once again became a small town, and we lucky locals were left to wander the recently crowded, chaotically merry streets to barely any sound other than the chill autumn breeze. The energy remained, but in a more haunting way, as cold November rains endeavored to collage cobblestone paths with the damp autumn leaves spent from their magical reverie.

In winter, dagger-like icicles descended from antique wooden windows, shaped into gracefully sinister curves by a Nor’easter’s howling winds. Local artists deftly carved intricate ice sculpture displays with translucent dragons and ghostly geisha, which gained an even more ephemeral beauty as the ice was softly topped with a layer of newly fallen crystalline snow. Seagulls would congregate, their feathers taking on the spectral appearance of snow before taking flight once more into the milky skies above. Doors were decorated with festive solstice wreaths made by our neighbor, a Wiccan priestess, who would twist them with greenery, spangle them with jingle spiders and silvered webs, and top them off with the welcoming wings of a gilded bat.

On sultry summer evenings, I’d walk down to the wharf through a heavy air that was scented with saline from the nearby Atlantic. The moon would cast gentle glints of light upon the eternal shape-shifting waters below. I sauntered past pitch-black iron gates to embark upon the geometric paths of Salem Common. Such walks were like tracing the steps of a sigil hidden in plain sight, wherein an evening stroll is transformed into the casting of a spell, walking ever forward to the pale domed colonnade at the heart of it all. I’ll always remember opening the door to my building and descending the stately granite steps right as a young girl and her mother were walking past. The charming girl glanced over at me and gleefully proclaimed, “Mommy, look! A real witch!”

Spring always arrived a bit later than desired, making up for the delay in wild tangles of vibrant flowers reawakening from their icy slumber. I often sought solace from the bustle of the town, finding relief in a lush garden that was somewhat hidden from view, located behind a reputedly haunted mansion. Years later I learned I had maternal ancestors who arrived in Salem in the 1600s but moved away around the time of the infamous witch trials. Their last name was the same family name as the first owners of this centuries-old home with the tucked-away garden that was host to some of my most cherished Salem moments of comfort and quietude. It was then that I harkened back to the guide’s comment at the House of Seven Gables about not being local until I’d had centuries of history there … and realized I was a true local after all.

Article from the Mermaid Issue #59
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Pull anchor up from a tiny stone bay with a cave. Sail softly over the sea so calm and eerie, silver and slithering still. Drop anchor cozy and snug at an empty island you’ve been reading about, surrounded with cliffs and birds. Walk the huge rocks off the shore that contain so many stories of survival, exploration, and history. Feel magic in the moment. Pull anchor again and head north with hot tea in hand, finding room on the sea.

To sail is to feel these directions in as many moments and in as many days as possible. We go from place to place begging our souls to digest enough, asking our minds to absorb enough, wanting time to explore enough. We will always ask, “Is it time to move on? Have I held this image in my mind so that when I sail away, I can still smell it and taste it?” But we move, and most of the magic is in the moving.

I was raised in the dunes that follow the shore of Lake Michigan. I would set up camp in the woods and look off into the distance as far as I could see. I knew there was land across the endlessness that was unreachable with my land legs. This began my love of sailboats and the magic a hull and sail offered, promising to sweep me to otherwise unattainable locations.

After my undergraduate degree in poetry, a thirst for travel possessed me, and I bought a van, tore out the seats for a bed, and traveled the States for the next two years. Shortly thereafter, I earned my teaching degree and married a sailor. Living a life with a house and schedule ended when I was homeschooling four children and my husband, Nick, became mobile in his work.

On Father’s Day of 2017, our family of six moved to a boat in the Caribbean that only my husband had seen. My youngest was in diapers and still breastfeeding. Selkie, our forty-nine-foot Westerly, tied at a marina, awaited the adventure that has continued. For five years, we have sailed up and down the Caribbean Islands, across the North Atlantic via Bermuda and the Azores, explored Ireland, wintered in Scotland, ping-ponged between the Outer Hebrides and Skye up to Shetland and over to Norway, traversed the Skagerrak and Kattegat to Denmark, circled the Baltic Sea and visited Russia, crossed the English Channel to Southern England where we quarantined during Covid, crossed the Bay of Biscay, visited multiple locations in Galicia, Spain, sailed to the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, back to the Caribbean, stopped in the Dominican Republic, stayed in Guatemala for hurricane season, enjoyed Panama and the canal to reach the Pacific, swam with sharks and sea lions in the Galapagos, and are currently headed for French Polynesia. In summary, we have circumnavigated the Atlantic and now have the Pacific in helm.

We choose this life of high highs and low lows. There are very few in-betweens, and if there are, the call to head out creeps back into the soul within a week. I can be covered in puke, holding a bucket for one of my children or myself, pushed all around by waves and wind, trying to cook on a gimbaled stove, and curse the life. But once we hit land and discover a new place and culture, within a week, we are all saying, “What’s next?” The life can also be filled with calm seas and a perfect wind, whales following with their songs echoing through the hull, my soul filled to the brim with gratefulness and awe. Like I said, high highs and low lows.

We sail because we can. Nick survived the storm that hit the Chicago to Mac race on Lake Michigan in 2011. The sky turned green with lightning, the rail was in the water with no sail, and the wind blew to 110 knots. I said, “If you can do that and get home safely, I trust you.” Sure, it can be terrifying, and I can hold my youngest child in my arms, feel Selkie sliding down gigantic waves, see my husband white-knuckle the helm, and curse my choices. But I can also be sailing downwind on a sunny day surrounded by hundreds of dolphins as far as the eye can see. I can slowly slide over a dark, night sea that has rivers of glowing jellyfish. I can dip my hands into the ocean after the sun sets with my oldest son and play with the phosphorescence as if we had magic wands. I can be fully dressed in my bibs, jacket, and hat and be pounding into the waves taking on water, watching schoolbooks float on the floor, and praying for the sun to rise, but I can also be moored outside the Pitons on Christmas and venture inland for a mud bath and a rinse in the natural pools. I can be tied to dock, banging and banging in strong winds, knowing that something might break and that it’s unsafe to leave the boat, or I can be tied to a dock under a castle in Scotland talking to locals about life on the sea. I can be motoring through a billion jellyfish or be in the middle of fjord watching cliff jumpers parachute down around me. Why do I sail? I’m addicted to these high highs and low lows. The more I see of the world, the more I realize there is so much more to see.

A sturdy anchor hold, a cityscape, a distant island, cobalt water moving in a steady breeze that fills my sails, a child in my arms who smells like salt, a single pelican, a tangerine sunset—this enchants me. Forty-nine feet of hull filled to the brim with my husband and four children is magical. When I share this and write, I am usually under the vastness of an immense number of stars, Milky Way brilliant, moon a sliver, phosphorescence in the water, waves sliding under in darkness, sails staying full, waves lapping with kindness, hot tea cupped in hand, words chosen carefully for a poem—these are my perfect night moves on the ocean. When things are all just right, there is quiet creativity, a simile, a juxtaposition.

Sometimes things aren’t perfect. Most frequently we are asked, “What is the worst weather you have ever seen?” There are five answers in five years: storm mid-north Atlantic with no help in sight, against wind and tide coming out of the Kiel Canal, psychologically finished off the shores of Portugal, petrified that the nine fishing boats surrounding us around Honduras were pirates, and the Skagerrak above Denmark.

Of course, it is interesting to tell these stories, but what I find more enchanting is a regular day. When the air is right, the coffee is made, and no one is seasick, schoolbooks come out. On a weekday at sea, wi-fi does not exist. We have loads of books piled high under the foot of our bed in the aft, lined up on floors in bags, and completely covering the foot space on my side of the bed for the entire school year. These books were accumulated in the States, packed in bags, hauled through airports, brought from rental to rental in the Yucatan on scuba adventures, and then finally delivered to the boat. My older two kids, a freshman in high school and a middle schooler, do school in their own time in their own way, asking for help only when they need it. I spend the rest of the day schooling my kindergartener and third grader until the day is almost done. It’s usually tied in with cooking and cleaning, sailing and singing, but mostly involves what other kids their age are doing at desks that don’t move with the sway of the waves.

I also try to weasel in my graduate work with any free time I have, either getting a daily dose of reading done or whittling away at a paper. Only if I’m extremely lucky on the weekends do I find time to do what I love, which is to write.

On a regular day in January, breakfast was pancakes with canned peaches, then a bit of school, and a shore adventure to explore yet another island that we have encountered. On this day, we prepared for a hike and fun at the beach after school. We loaded into our dinghies with our buddy boat (Lucky Girl from Scotland, which carries a lovely couple with two spritely little boys), and motored to shore to beach our dinghies and head inland. Since Covid, most towns are eerily empty, but a few locals with shops and trinkets line the streets, and there are some confused tourists, sunburned, wandering, looking about. We head up an alley and get asked in Spanish to keep our masks on as we walk. A man in a hut asks us if we want a trail. This may be the only word he knows in English. He points to some dirt behind his house.

We duck under some hanging laundry and off we go, up a steep hill. Not far in, hoping for sloths, I spot a giant tarantula crossing the path behind the quick feet of our children. Further up the hill, with many tired complaints from the six children, we pass a dried-up riverbed and brilliantly colored tiny frogs darting up and down the rocks. At the top of the trail is a small Catholic shrine that looks well attended. With good conversation, we head further up a road to look out across the small island at the daunting Pacific that we have yet to cross. The walk back is long but executed with more enthusiasm, knowing that beach fun is still ahead.

After a day like this, school can sometimes be abandoned, but the conversations that take place on land about the environment and creatures that dwell there has filled in any gaps. I prepare a pork roast for dinner in our small, half-size oven while the kids swim away the last of their energy. A soundtrack to an epic film is played in the background while we bob on the water in mostly silence after a tiring day. My youngest sits on my lap for another brilliant, orange-peel sunset, and I am so grateful to see, truly see, the world, which contains so much water. Friends dinghy over for a goodnight hug. Only a wee bit of a film takes the last moments of our day. Perhaps this is not the most regular day, but it contains regular things. The magic is the motivation to do more than the regular.

A magical story that contains one of the five worst is from our most recent summer spent in Guatemala. Rio Dulce is used as a summer hurricane home for sailors. It invites cruisers to travel a day up the river lined with three-hundred-foot high jungle cliffs enough to inspire Tarzan. There’s a small catch though. To get in, if you are a sailboat with a deep draft, you must be tipped. A tipping is when you pay a local fishing boat captain to come grab your halyard, motor to the side, put your rail in the water (i.e. almost completely sideways) as you motor on over the shallow waters that protect the river’s entrance. The first step is to make sure all things are secure below; the boat will heel to one side much more than when sailing. Step two, brace yourself and get out your camera. It doesn’t take long and then you are in, completely ready to go through customs and find a sweet spot to get work done on the boat. Work here is cheap and good. We practically had our whole boat refitted and took a scuba trip to the Yucatan and Belize while it occurred.

Rio Dulce is intoxicating, but that is another story. This story involves entering and exiting. Once tipped in, you need a tip out. Equally exciting. But the trick is—something they don’t tell you coming in—is that all the Atlantic Ocean wants to funnel into this corner of Guatemala. There must be zero wind to motor out. The scary part is that you must sail very wide around Honduras to avoid the modern-day pirates that exist there. We chose to take a day motoring up the coast of Belize to get a good angle against the wind around Honduras. Sailors recommend 200 miles. The wind chose to keep us at 100 miles off the coast, and when we approached the shelf that extends 100 miles off the corner of the mainland, we were surrounded by nine fishing vessels that we were certain contained conspiring pirates. They spent the day testing us. They would motor right toward us in preparation to ram our hull unless we changed course. At sunset, they all stayed within eyesight, surrounding our boat.

With weather, you can change course, fall off, avoid. With humans, you pray, even if you are not religious. This night, I was trying to make spaghetti. I was so worried as I stashed food, hid my grandmother’s jewelry, and prepped what makeshift weapons we had that I burned the meatballs. Come darkness, when they started motoring right toward us again, I shed tears into my burnt meatball dinner. The night got darker, the distance got further. With our AIS locator device turned off, we changed course multiple times hoping to lose them. Nothing happened. No one tried to board us, steal from us, or threaten us—apart from the possible ramming. My stomach lurched. Spaghetti threatened to reappear, but we passed the troubled seas only psychologically damaged. Later that night, I looked at the stars that spread endless amounts of love and wonder in my heart. Low lows and high highs. A sea life can creep slowly like a gentle sloth holding her baby in the treetops or smash forward like inner-city taxi driver coming off a meth addiction.

Magic mostly occurs when we are at sea, and I am awakened for my night shift around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. The water world looms, and the stars spill in the skies with as much mystery as the water below. No boat in sight, just pure water, wind, and our floating home in movement with the earth’s elements. I’m alone. My family sleeps, and I have my tiny phone to write a poem. The top hatch of the hard Bimini is pushed wide open, and strapped into the cockpit with my life jacket, I poke my head out by the sails to locate all the constellations and planets I know.

Mystical enchantment is an understatement. It is vast bewilderment, awe of circumstance, humbleness in survival. The night sky splits open for me like a river, and the breeze opens and satisfies my soul. I am completely within myself—alive. Anything could happen, yet there is a notion that this current situation will hold, and I may just be held in it. There is so much unseen space that could possibly swallow me, but for some reason comforts me, and I am not lonely. Rain could sprinkle, stars could dwindle, but the phosphorescent sea that leaves behind fairy dust will twinkle brighter. The sea salt in the air splashing from the break of waves on the hull softens my skin and my composure to love the life. The mud is washed away. No shoes needed. I’ve been to places and nestled my children near crocodiles, volcano eruptions, and turtles. I’ve kissed them to bed near giant reefs, coconuts, and to the rhythm of local music. We’ve lived through being stuck going back and forth, and now we leave whispers on the wind as we set out into what may seem like an endless horizon.

Follow Magdalena Louise Hirt at sealongingselkie.net

There are a few things about Ireland that you can always rely on: It will always be damp, the vegetable of the day will always be potato, and there will always be an ancient castle or church nearby that you can have the pleasure of gazing upon—after you pay your eight-euro entry fee. Scattered across the emerald green hills, islands, and estuaries of Ireland and Northern Ireland, however, are also the remains of sixty-six round towers. These mysterious structures were built from the 7th to 10th centuries AD, making them older than most of those castles and church ruins. And in most cases, they are free to visit.

Many of the tower sites were considered sacred places long before the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. Professor Philip Callahan, an expert on the towers, suggests that their seemingly random geographical arrangement actually mirrors the positions of the stars in the northern sky at winter solstice. These facts and others intrigued me. The more I read about the towers and their puzzling origins, the more compelled I felt to see them for myself.

With maps, guide books, and GPS coordinates spread across the dining room table, I began to plot a route that would take me to each of the sixty-six tower sites. With all this planning,
I was worried both that I wouldn’t complete my mission and that in its pursuit I wouldn’t leave room for all the chance happenings and encounters that give travel its depth and dimension. My edict for this journey: Leave room for magic.

Nothing quells my enjoyment of being abroad more quickly than the presence of other people who are enjoying being abroad, especially if they are doing the enjoying loudly and in an American accent. So as an added layer of protection against the tour bus set, I decided to visit in January, when the Irish weather is so foul that half of the tour bus operators are busy getting sunburnt in Florida while the other half are crisping up on the Costa del Sol.

Having lived in the Pacific Northwest for more than twenty years, I felt fully prepared for the Irish winter. I am an avid outdoor adventure enthusiast accustomed to eight months of rain a year, and according to my recent send-away DNA kit, I’m also part Irish (along with roughly 75 percent of Americans and all of Boston—yes, even the cats). Additionally, there are North Face and Eddie Bauer outlet stores near me and if they can’t prepare a person for a couple of months of winter walking, what can? With my annotated maps, sketching supplies, and a backpack full of discounted rain gear, I arrived in Ireland.

As the plane disgorged and I made my way down the mobile staircase at Dublin airport, my jacket flapped about my face viciously and it occurred to me that the one thing I had not adequately prepared for was the wind. I was also woefully unprepared for a nightmare called “the slurry,” but we will get to that a bit later.

My original itinerary included all sixty-six sites, but I can tell you now that a few of the tumbled-down towers I visited were so overgrown and decrepit that one could eliminate them from an “official” list. But the forgotten and neglected sites were also among the most enchanting: At least one tower is now occupied by a family of badgers, as I discovered while doing some evening sketching in Galway. These were the charming black-and-white badgers, not the scruffy dun-colored ones that fight bears for fun and are regularly featured in “Would you rather?” games.

While some towers are in great condition or have been restored, others have become casualties of time, lightning, fire, marauders, Cromwell, and other atrocities. Some are in cities, others adjacent to well-trafficked tourist destinations: the round tower on the Rock of Cashel, for example, and the tower at Glendalough, a site of outstanding natural beauty, as the signs will inform you. Nestled in the majestic Wicklow mountains, Glendalough sees enough traffic to merit its own tour-bus-size parking lot.

But my journey began with my trudging up a muddy hill, looking for a tower near Drogheda—“Ah, you mean Draaaaww-daaahhh,” a young woman corrected my pronunciation when I stopped to ask for directions at one of the baffling combination post office, mini-mart, coffee shop, gas stations you find in the countryside. I’d had to repeat myself several times before the girl—with her tangerine-colored hair in a scraped-back ponytail and a gold necklace that said “baby girl” in bubble letters—could make sense of what I was saying.

A sign outside advertised coffee, so I asked baby girl for one of those and she unceremoniously pointed to a hot beverage machine in a corner. It was next to a dusty condom dispenser. In that moment, I was sorely disappointed, but in the coming weeks I’d come to appreciate these ubiquitous if uninspiring contraptions—hot beverage machines, not condoms, though I think we can all agree on the utility of the latter—if nothing else because they gave me an excuse to take refuge from the wind and chat up truck drivers, an activity I always enjoy.

Back out in the rain with the brisk wind violating my face holes and forty-odd pounds of stuff strapped to my back, I set about trying to locate the first tower. I was squinting through the rain at a hand-drawn and now very wet paper map when a battered vehicle—more tin can than car—pulled up beside me.

A tiny red-faced man leaned across the passenger seat, where a tree was primly seated, and flung the door open. He began to shout at me, his face florid, his gestures as incomprehensible as whatever was coming out of his mouth.

The whole situation was disconcerting. Most people would just lower the window to do their shouting, and they would likely not have a tree riding shotgun—not a branch, a whole tree. I believe it was an aspen. Being winter, it was mostly leafless, its root bulb tucked into a burlap sack, perhaps for the sake of modesty.

The man’s accent was broad, which generally means “unintelligible unless you were born in the same village as the person speaking.” Given the context I could only assume that he was offering me a lift. Why he was so angry about it, I couldn’t tell you. I considered accepting—the wind had now gotten to second base and I was not feeling meteorologically amorous. But the car was a two-door affair, and the tree clearly had dibs on the front seat. I’d have to climb past or over the thing with my awkward backpack to access the rear seat, which was full of potatoes: Not potatoes in sacks but naked potatoes (a notoriously immodest tuber, the potato). They were rolling around on the floor, the back seat, the back window—just a very substantial number of potatoes.

I declined the offer. I tried to explain that I was on a walking trip, visiting round towers. He shook his tiny red fist at me. I needed the exercise, I said, trying to frame this situation as a
“weight-loss journey.” My would-be Samaritan seemed incensed by this statement. He threw up his little red arms and babbled something to the tree, which agreed that I was a complete idiot. I awkwardly wrangled the aspen branches back into the vehicle as politely as possible and shut the car door. I smiled stupidly and waved as they drove away. In the back window the nudie potatoes taunted me, rolling about dry, jolly, and safe from the advances of the wind.

As I walked on, I pondered the encounter and wondered if I had just failed to leave room for magic. Potato gnome is a thing, right? Replace the rusty car with a dilapidated horse cart and that encounter was clearly the set-up for some kind of fairy tale. I vowed then to set aside my idea of tackling this project on foot. If an angry gnome wanted to give me a ride, I’d accept. Yes, I might be turned into a potato, but I’d probably learn a lot from the experience.

Approximately three minutes later I climbed into a white Range Rover driven by Rebecca, an interior designer from Cork. She had expensive-looking silvery hair cut into a stylish bob, and she was wearing a cashmere tracksuit. (I still think about that tracksuit from time to time; it looked very soft.) This Irish Gwyneth Paltrow had no vegetal friends on board, but we did have a nice conversation about round towers, and she conveyed me to my destination in all the comfort a modern luxury SUV can provide. Heated leather seats, I decided, are a kind of magic.

In the two months I spent chasing the towers, this would happen again and again. I couldn’t walk any significant distance without someone stopping to offer me a lift. If I paused in a pub to ask for directions, some kind soul would pop up and offer to take me on their motorcycle, or tractor, or boat. I was even extended the use of a “courtesy donkey” in County Donegal, which, I assume, is the one you ride if your regular donkey is in for repairs. While the land in Ireland is undoubtedly full of magic, it is the people I found most enchanting. Again and again they proved themselves welcoming, generous, and kind.

The round towers themselves were a point of connection with many of the people I encountered. The towers are broadly dispersed throughout the country and everyone has one in their village or on their grandparent’s farm, or behind the dilapidated glove factory where they once accidentally had sex with a second cousin on their mother’s side (as told to me by a guy we will call Ian).

I spent a few days in the village of Donore (neighbor to the aforementioned Drogheda), a place I chose based on its proximity to a cluster of towers—Donaghmore, Inniskeen, Dromiskin, Duleek, and Monasterboice. When I told the very fine folks at the local pub about my project, they offered to help. A lovely fellow named Smasher drove me out to the Donaghmore tower and along the way told me a fascinating story about raising American turkeys. Unfortunately, I cannot relay that tale here because his accent was even broader than the potato gnome’s and the only two words I understood all day were “American” and “turkey.” We had a grand old time nonetheless.

Traveling from county to county I encountered many folks speaking Irish while others spoke English with varied accents and speech patterns. Some folks were difficult to understand while others spoke in lyric, lovely rhythms or in ways that were unexpectedly comic and profane. Any adjective, for example, can be turned into a pejorative by adding the letter y. Bald becomes baldy, as in, “never go to the old glove factory with that big baldy fellow.” I also found their aptitude with curse words to be quite amusing, if at times also shocking. I’m not saying that all Irish folks curse compulsively; I just happened to come across some real champions. It is possible that this was a sampling bias based on the amount of time I spent drinking coffee next to condom dispensers.

As January came to a close, I had visited thirty-one of the sixty-six towers and had seen dozens of cities, towns, and villages and hundreds of miles of Ireland and Northern Ireland. I felt optimistic about finishing in the time I had allotted myself. It was at that point that the weather took a turn toward true unpleasantness. Several big snowstorms, the kind with alphabetically determined names and gale-force wind ratings, swept through, and the Emerald Isle was swathed in snow.

I continued to trudge through the snow and sleet, but several of my towers were on islands, and each day I called round to the ferry offices only to be told that all boats were canceled. On the shore of Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, I tried to track down an audacious tour-boat operator that I’d heard about in a Reddit forum. It was rumored that in exchange for a bottle of whiskey and gas money he would take you out to the tower on Holy Island, no matter the weather. When I arrived, I was informed at the local pub that I’d just missed him. Apparently he had “fecked off to Costa del Sol,” the day before.

It may seem that “the local pub” is a recurring theme in this story, and indeed in most Irish travelogues. If you haven’t had the pleasure of traveling in Ireland or Northern Ireland, you may have the impression that it is a land of dyspeptic bar dwellers and chronic alcoholics. But that isn’t the case. Every town undoubtedly has its drunks, but I’ve never encountered, for example, a people more reluctant to drink and drive (or drinkdrive, as they perplexingly call it). Much like the post office, the pub is a multiuse institution: equal parts gathering place, music venue, information center, gossip hub, and vegetable-of-the-day dispensary. No matter where I was in my ramblings, when I’d show up cold and wet and frequently lost, it was never awkward to order a pot of tea and sit by the fire. I never felt unsafe or unwelcome and when I really needed help, like that ill-fated February afternoon when I learned about the slurry, it was the folks at the pub that I turned to.

Ireland has a robust tourist industry, but it is also a working agricultural economy. These two things co-exist fairly amicably. After all, tourists love sheep dogs and wooly lambs and adorable donkeys. You can even “meet a craggy faced Irish farmer” as an AirBnB experience. But agriculture can be quite a smelly affair. Odiferous animal husbandry waste products are secreted away in large vats, and as they break down, they become a foul soup that is called the slurry. There are complex rules that govern where and when the farmers can suck the poo-goo into tanker trucks and drive it out into the fields to be dispersed via high-powered hose, and I was right on time.

The afternoon was cold and clear, the wind brisk but tolerable. My tower for the day was in the middle of a field in County Tipperary, one of Ireland’s more agricultural areas. The sun was casting at a slant through the silver shimmer of low-lying clouds, and the snow-powdered fields glowed with winter light. I tromped up a hill from the ruined tower with the intention
of doing a quick sketch. I sheltered behind a large boulder and began to work. When I heard the truck coming, I assumed it was a tractor and, crouched down as I was behind a boulder, the driver never saw me. By the time I realized they were spraying, it was too late to run.

I stood up in a panic and opened my mouth to yell out. What was I intending to say? Please don’t spray me with shhhhiiiiiii? We will never know … the words were literally drowned out by a high-powered head-to-toe dowsing with a substance the thickness and texture of lentil soup. “It’s in my mouth,” was my first thought as I began to gag. “Oh no, my eyes,” was my second thought, and my eyes began to vomit, which is something I didn’t know they could do.

My waterproof outfit was dripping with the fetid paste, but it was my face that had gotten the worst of the drenching. I stumbled down the hill convinced bacteria were eating my eyeballs. There was a little pub at the bottom of the hill and when I pushed the door open three elderly men turned to look at me. I stammered desperately, “Do you have a hose?” All three of the good fellows sprang into action. A faucet and hose were located at the combination donkey repair shop–bakery next door. As I stood in the thin February light, three amiable strangers hosed fermented feces out of my mouth, and I marveled, once again, at the hospitality of the Irish. They really are the nicest people. Perhaps, I thought in that moment, they will help me burn my clothes and also my hair.

In the end I made it to only sixty-two of the sixty-six towers on my list. While the weather prevented me from getting to the last of the sites, it was COVID border closures that sent me home before I had finished my quest. The four towers I have left—Devenish, Inis Cealtra, Scattery, Tory Island—all require boats and are probably best visited in the warmer months. As I write this, I am plotting my return. My next visit will be a different kind of journey, slower and more meandering. I’ve stayed in touch with many of the kind folks I met, and I have people to see and donkeys to check on. I’d like to go back and thank those fellows at the pub that saved me from the slurry, have a drink with Smasher, and see how it’s going with the turkeys.

When you are planning your next adventure, consider the round towers and all the beauty Ireland offers. And wherever travel takes you, near home or far, remember to leave room for magic. Additionally, if anyone knows where I can get one of those cashmere tracksuits, please drop me a line.

Follow Siolo Thompson on Instagram @siolothompson.

It sits grandly in the ancient and mysterious highlands of Scotland, its stalwart exterior refusing to give hint of the shiny, sexy glamour of its over-the-top interior. Once known as Loch Lann House, now more commonly called Couthy Home, the structure is located on what its owner, Eilidh Sutherland, calls “the fringes” of Culloden Wood. History buffs—and Outlander fans—will recall the forest as a slice of the site of the infamous Battle of Culloden, re-enacted in the season-three opener of the hit Starz series. The bloody final confrontation between government troops and the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie, it was the last battle to be fought on British soil.

The original section of Couthy Home, a round tower that is more than three centuries old, is said to have housed a secret Jacobite escape tunnel dating to before the battle. Three octagonal rooms just off the tower are nearly as old, but it is not the history of the house, as enticing as it is, that has Sutherland’s 25,000 Instagram followers clamoring to see photographs of it. It is what she describes as Couthy Home’s “maximalist eclectic” aesthetic. The house and its acre of grounds, all of it designed by Sutherland, are quite simply stuffed to the rafters with decadent fabulousness.

Sumptuous and quirky, funky and stunning, this is the sort of place where chandeliers drip from ceilings in room after room, feathers are a design motif, and a faux zebra with wings in a top hat leaps from a purple-hued wall. Then there is the gold soaking tub, one of Sutherland’s favorite pieces, which sits under a glinting disco ball beneath a gilded mirror hanging on an ebony-colored wall. The tub, Sutherland will tell you if you ask, “was from an antique dealer who salvaged it from a Parisian hotel. I source items from everywhere, the internet, salvage, antique and junk shops. Facebook Marketplace is my new best friend.” Sutherland bought Couthy Home with her husband, Rory, eighteen years ago, while pregnant with the couple’s sixth child. The family spent years living in the original house before receiving permission from the cultural preservation agency Historic Scotland to build an addition connecting it to the gardens. After a long decade of planning and building, the project—which includes a curved-glass extension leading to an open-plan living room, dining area, and kitchen and the couple’s new en suite bedroom—is now complete.

Among the new construction’s many delights is the Sutherland’s private bathroom. Decorated with leopard-print wallpaper and what Sutherland identifies as discontinued tiles, it features the washstand from the 1967 spy parody film, Casino Royale, sourced from Sutherland’s favorite salvage yard. “It was designed with the least amount of thought,” she says, “but it’s one of my favorite rooms in the house.”

Another favorite space is the snug in the older part of the house, which offers a cozy purple velvet couch and is, Sutherland says, “just the most charming room to sit in on a Sunday afternoon with the papers and copious cups of tea.” But she just might be most thrilled by the new extension, which finally lets enough light into the house to allow plants to thrive. “I love plants, and before the extension was built we couldn’t keep them alive,” she explains. “Now in the new glass corridor, it’s a jungle. I firmly believe for a room to feel grounded it needs flowers and foliage, real or faux.”

Outside the home, Sutherland’s love of greenery also becomes obvious. Along with outbuildings that include two greenhouses, a barbecue hut, and a Japanese gazebo, the property boasts a series of themed garden “rooms” divided into a cottage garden, a natural garden, a Japanese garden, and a white garden. There are also five ponds and a new woodland walk and lawns, all of it presided over by a half-dozen or so ridiculously adorable French bulldogs, who frequently make appearances in her Instagram feed. “Yes, all the Frenchies are ours,” Sutherland says with what seems to be typical good humor. “As our children grow up and leave home, they’re replaced with a Frenchie!”

Couthy Home in all its perfect, decadent splendor may now be, at last, finally, finally finished. But it most likely will forever be a work in progress. Sutherland—who studied art and interior design in college but counts no great design influence, simply doing whatever takes her “fancy”—says her home is “constantly changing.” The older part of the house, she explains, was designed around the requirements of accommodating six children, and the new extension will likely be subject to further evolutions.

“We want to be surrounded by things we love and cherish,” Sutherland says. “I think this quote by William Morris should be the mantra for anyone who wants an individual look: ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’”

For more images of Couthy Home, visit Instagram @couthyhome. 

Feature Image by Norbert Uzseka

“It’s beautiful. But it’s going to cost a fortune to renovate.”

My sister walked around the living room of the apartment in Budapest, looking up at the high ceiling, shaking her head at the cracked plaster and flaking paint. I remembered the last time the walls had been painted, when my grandfather was alive. He had painted them himself, climbing up on a ladder to finish the ceiling. He had left the shape of a rabbit on that ceiling just for me, painting over it only at the very end. That must have been when I was about five, not long before my family emigrated to the United States, leaving my grandparents and the apartment behind.

Now here I was, back again, many years later. The apartment had not changed much in that time, and it desperately needed renovating. I didn’t happen to have a fortune, but I had some savings. My first three novels, a historical trilogy, had sold well enough that I had money in the bank, which seemed like a miracle to me after years of scraping by on fellowships and student loans in graduate school. I had enough to make the apartment habitable, and perhaps, with time and imagination, I could once again transform it into the enchanted place it had been to me as a child.

The first thing you should know about the apartment in Budapest is that it’s on the second floor of a palace—called the Hadik-Barkóczy Palace, located in a historical district on the Pest side of the Danube. It was built for Count Endre Hadik-Barkóczy in 1912. In those days, noble families had town palaces in addition to their country estates, and one of the fashionable places to build them was around the Hungarian National Museum, an elegant neoclassical building with a surrounding park where my grandmother used to take me for walks when I was a child. The park was right across the street from the apartment—you could see its ancient linden trees from the front windows. Once, by one of its winding paths, my grandfather found a baby pigeon fallen from its nest. He took it home and fed it himself. It grew until it could fly around the apartment, perching on the furniture. My grandfather built a cage for it covered in old pantyhose and put the cage on the windowsill so the pigeon could get used to being outdoors. Eventually it was strong enough to tear a hole in the pantyhose and fly back to the park. But my grandfather said the pigeon remembered him—when he took his daily walks it would follow him, hopping from branch to branch.

My grandparents bought the apartment after the Second World War, in 1950. By then, the palace had been converted into an apartment building. At the front, the apartment had two large rooms that must once have been a double salon, since they were still connected by an elegant, arching glass door. The tall windows let in the golden sunlight of Budapest. At the back was a kitchen and pantry where my grandmother produced the best soups and stews and preserves I have ever tasted. She had been trained as an artist, and she brought an artistic sensibility to everything she touched. She could paint flowers and landscapes, sew and embroider and make yards of crocheted lace, reupholster her own furniture. I admired how she could do so much herself, not realizing that she had little choice—it was a time of hardship and poverty in Hungary. She had grown up in a privileged and relatively prosperous family, but in those difficult postwar years, she learned to make do. She cooked magnificent meals on a small gas stove that had to be lit with matches. The furniture consisted of a few valuable, though battered, antiques supplemented by cheap but convenient modern pieces. The walls were decorated with her own paintings—watercolors of flowers and landscapes, some portraits in oils. The apartment was heated by two ceramic stoves in the corners of the living room and bedroom. My mother would go down with a bucket and bring up coal from the apartment building cellars. Clothes were washed by hand and dried on a rack that hung over the claw-foot iron tub. The rack could be winched up and down, hung with clothes and then raised for maximum air circulation.

As I child, I didn’t think about these difficulties. I was absorbed in the things children care about, such as my pet hamster, which looked like a small bun. One day, cleaning behind the sofa, my grandmother discovered a nest of yarn and fabric scraps that it had assembled whenever I let it out of its box to scamper around the apartment. I still remember the lights on the Christmas tree, which were real candles that clipped on the branches. My grandfather kept a bucket by the tree just in case a branch caught fire, but to me they looked magical, like stars. It must have been a difficult life for my mother as well, living with her parents again, trying to raise her daughter after a divorce. She had spent a year in the United States on a research fellowship, and that was where she saw her future—it must have taken courage for her to leave her parents and country for a new land. I grew up in the United States, on Campbell’s soup and American television, although we held on to some Hungarian customs. Each Christmas, we hung foil-wrapped candy called szaloncukor on the tree, and my mother still made some of the dishes my grandmother had produced in the apartment kitchen—chicken paprikás and cucumber salad and sour cherry strudel. By the time I returned to Hungary again, I was a teenager. My grandparents were older and less able to keep up with repairs, although my grandmother still crocheted yards of lace. I went back when I could, but I was busy with college and then graduate school—I didn’t have the time or money to visit Budapest. Eventually, my grandparents grew too old to live in the apartment alone, and it was left empty.

By the time I had that conversation with my sister, my grandparents had passed away and the apartment had been empty for many years. It was in desperate need of renovation. The window frames, more than a hundred years old, had rotted and the windows no longer closed properly. The damp that got in warped the parquet floors. Years of soot turned the walls my grandfather had painted dim and dingy. The electrical system was no longer safe—it could cause a fire behind the plaster. I had been visiting more regularly now that I was a university lecturer with summers off. It was like camping in a palace—I lit the old stove with matches, dried my clothes on a rack, and slept on one of the ancient beds, whose deleterious effects on my back had to be countered with daily yoga. And yet, the apartment itself was still beautiful. The ceilings still soared, the walls still looked out at the park around the National Museum, and in the morning I could hear birds singing in the linden trees. My grandmother’s paintings still hung on the walls. It was still the magical place of my childhood. I checked my savings, sent up a brief prayer to whichever saint is in charge of renovations, and called an interior designer.

That was last August. I walked through the apartment with the designer and architect, talked about what I thought needed to be done, and then left—confident that I would be back soon. The semester was starting and I had classes to teach, but surely I would be able to return for fall break? Or if not then, for the winter break in January? But pandemic restrictions and border closures made it impossible to travel. I had to renovate an apartment by emails and text messages sent back and forth across the Atlantic. I picked out tiles and paint colors based on photographs the designer sent me. I approved plans for the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry room without being able to see the rooms themselves. I created a folder on my phone for images, plans, ideas. Slowly, over the winter, a new electrical system was put in. The walls were refinished and painted. The parquet was sanded and varnished. The most difficult and expensive task was replacing the windows—because the apartment is in a historical district, the new windows had to be the same color and style as the old ones. They had to be custom-made by a specialized window company. I felt both relief and triumph when I was told the new windows were in place. As I write this, a new kitchen is being installed, with a stove that will light when I turn the knob. I have seen it only in photographs.

In two weeks, I will be in Budapest. What will I find when I get there? The antique furniture is still there, although it will need to be refinished—several wardrobes, the sort you enter to get to Narnia; two tables; a few armchairs; a vitrine where my grandmother used to display her porcelain; and an Empire settee that I’m convinced is filled with real horsehair. The cheap modern furniture has been cleared out. I will replace it with solid pieces that complement the style of the antiques. I have already ordered a bed, a desk, a dining room table, and some chairs. There is no sofa, no rugs, no curtains. It will take a lot of work to turn the apartment back into what it once was and should be—a home. But in the morning, light will come through the tall windows, and I will hear the birds in the linden trees. Slowly, I will fill the apartment with books. I will put the lace my grandmother made on the tables, the pillows she embroidered in the armchairs. Her paintings will once again hang on the wall. And when I sit at my desk, writing stories, I will be able to look out at the park where I played as a child, never imagining the journey that would take me so far away and then bring me back again to my apartment in Budapest.

Sometimes finding the way to a magical place or space within yourself is the best type of journey. Escaping outside yourself, through immersion in nature, historical and cultural sites, and visits to exciting cities with rich itineraries can certainly be exhilarating. Testing your physical limits—hiking, biking, diving, surfing, as well as other athletic pursuits—makes you feel more alive. But traveling inward can be truly transformative.

As someone whose work leads me to travel for about half of every month—except for the past year, of course, when I was grounded like everyone else—I am well aware that travel can be a catalyst for a deeper discovery.

Some destinations can set off a tripwire, or trigger an opening, like a portal that leads you into a profound point of stillness inside yourself. The last time it happened to me was when I visited Angkor Wat, a UNESCO heritage site in Cambodia, outside Siem Reap. Angkor Wat is one of the most important—and largest—archaeological sites in not only Southeast Asia but the world.

Set in the thick of the jungle, Angkor Archaeological Park holds the spectacular ruins and remains of the powerful Khmer Kingdom, which ruled from the 9th to the 15th century. Angkor was the capital, and historians believe it was once a sprawling city almost the size of Los Angeles.

The Preah Khan temple is a former university of medicine and Neak Poan, an ancient hospital. Locals still pull rich medicinal plants from the grounds there and use them to treat all kinds of illness. There are areas of Angkor Wat still used as places of worship, where modern Khmer worship temple deities with ceremonies, prayers, music, and dance performances.

But now, for the most part, it’s a haunting ruin.

The place I am most drawn to is the Jungle Temple, where thick, wild vines grow out of the earth and intertwine with the crumbling stone structure, in an Ozymandias sort of way that is humbling. It is a visual metaphor that forces you to think about how humankind and nature are interwoven, and it reminds you that humans need to have more respect for the natural world, and not only because we are part of it. The Women’s Temple, where stone structures are carved with detailed representations of female deities, was once a vibrant house of worship for powerful women. You can feel the prayerful thrum of chanting, almost a rhythmic vibration in the air, stirred up by the energy of all those women from long ago.

The power of this magical place, for me, creates a still point. And the memory of it is transformative. When I remember Angkor Wat, it brings me to that still center, where I feel grounded, serene, and entirely whole. I can close my eyes and transport myself back there, no matter where I am in the world, and re-create that feeling, because it lives inside me. Here is how I bring it back, and how you can too.

Feature Image Photo by TAYLOR MOORE

If the central question of the Enlightenment was “How?” then the Romantics were distinguished by their “Why?”—their yearning to understand the self. In rebellion against the Age of Reason, the Romantics literally let their fancy roam, traveling the world in search of experiences that would inspire them.

Meditating in delight, wonderment, grief, or love, they connected with the natural world and themselves, most often through walking tours and mountaineering (which British Romantics pioneered). Mary and Percy Shelley published their History of a Six Week’s Tour about a trip through Western Europe; Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland documents her six weeks with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Dorothy, William, and Coleridge also walked extensively together through the U.K. and Germany, John Keats walked through Scotland (ascending Ben Nevis). The route of Lord Byron’s Grand Tour and his swimming of the Hellespont are still practiced today.

At the risk of sounding cliché, we still use traveling as a vehicle to find ourselves, though an ascent of Helvellyn or a weekend in Rome feels different in 2020 than it must have in 1820. Still, as I followed along their pathways in my own recent travels, I could easily meet a Byron bedding countless men and women through Italy, or a Wordsworth taking meditative walks throughout the Lake District.

With modern travel, it’s easier than ever to roam where the Romantics did, occupy the spaces they had, or pay our respects at their final resting places. For the past few years, I’ve been doing just that, determined to understand the landscapes that ignited one of the most influential periods in literature.

This year, Covid-19 has left the future of travel uncertain, making it the perfect time to indulge in some armchair travel. Whether lockdown has kindled your dormant travel fire or broken your heart by keeping you housebound, I hope my Romantic pilgrimage inspires you to connect with yourself and the world around you.

Tintern Abbey
Wales

“Sorry we’re late; the damn engine caught fire!” That may have stopped a sane person from boarding the bus, but after walking halfway to Wales that morning, I was too excited to care.

With the River Wye as my constant companion, I traced the Welsh border south from Monmouth, enveloped by ancient trees and the smell of spring. The sliver of a road felt more and more like an afterthought—a symbolic gesture, rather than something that a bus should be driving on. All at once, the cavernous ruin of Tintern Abbey rose before me, with as much weight and enchantment as it had for Dorothy and William Wordsworth over two centuries ago.

It wasn’t always a ruin, of course. Before falling into decay, the abbey was occupied from the 12th to the 16th century. What remains is a marvel of engineering that inspires a deep sense of reverence. I pause to imagine the abbey at its height: the intricate stained glass, solemn chanting pulsing through the nave, incense thick in the air. I wandered over wet grass, neck craned, arms outstretched, tracing my fingertips over the heavy stones.

Wordsworth’s best poems encourage us to know ourselves, which he did by connecting with nature. In “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” he debates memory, reflecting on the man he was five years prior and the memories he’d made which sustained him in that time. Returning to the abbey, this time with Dorothy, he addresses his younger self and his “dear, dear friend,” his muse, confidant, and biggest supporter. This left such an impression on Dorothy that, almost three decades later, she alludes to the memory in her poem “Thoughts on My Sick Bed.”

It’s been five years since I visited Tintern Abbey, and to those memories, I have owed “in hours of weariness sensations sweet.” Yet, as Wordsworth did, I wish I could visit again with my best friend, my own sister. We’d cross the Wye to the Devil’s Pulpit and together ascend through a wooded copse. The damp leaves would give way underfoot until we’d pass through a clearing and drink in the quiet river and abbey below.

Gasmere
Lake District. Cumbria

When Coleridge and the Wordsworths made their home in the Lakes, the area was undergoing increasing industrialization and displacement of people. Lyrical Ballads was an experiment by Coleridge and Wordsworth to write in an accessible way for the masses about subjects that would be meaningful and relatable to them.

My first stop is Dove Cottage, accessible only by guided tour. After knocking my head on a doorframe, I realize it’s an appropriately diminutive name. Following their mother’s death, William had studied at Cambridge and traveled extensively, while Dorothy lived as an orphan, bouncing between relatives for twenty years. The cottage was Dorothy’s first real home, and as I squeeze through each room, I can feel her touch in their trinkets and decorations, the comfort and love between the walls.

Afterwards, I visit the museum, a two-story barn conversion. Inside, I find Coleridge’s death mask, a collection of early manuscripts from the Lake poets, and a few personal items. My last stop in town is St. Oswald’s Church. Down a path flanked with daffodils, you’ll find the Wordsworths’ plot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the quietude I was expecting. Busloads of tourists are dropped in the town center to amble around, as the church is right on the main road.

To escape the crowds, I decided to hike Loughrigg Fell, a favorite of the poets, offering a dramatic view across the Lakes. In their walks covering vast distances, Coleridge and the Wordsworths would discuss all manner of topics and compose their poetry. In fact, while walking, William is said to have committed entire poems to memory, only writing them when back home.

On my descent from Loughrigg, I breathed deeply of the expanse of greenery that fell away before me. There wasn’t a living soul for miles. Further down, I found shelter from the incessant wind among the branches of a forgotten tree. Resting under the wide sky, I understood why our poets cherished these hills as a place for contemplation.

Keats House
Hamstead, London

Past the row of trendy brunch spots and artisanal bakeries in Hampstead Heath, I find what was once Wentworth Place, now “Keats House.” Here, Keats wrote his most enduring poetry, contracted the tuberculosis that would claim his life, and met Fanny Brawne, the woman who set his heart on fire.

Wandering through the rooms where he composed “Lamia,” “Hyperion,” and his odes felt surreal. I was immersed in his memory. An original manuscript of “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” hangs on the wall. I press my nose as close as it goes, studying the handwriting. In a portrait above the mantel, Keats dreamily reads on a chair by the window. I look down to see the chair in front of me.

We don’t remember Keats as a boxer, swimmer, or womanizer like Byron, nor a theologian or essayist like Coleridge. The widely known image is the waifish, melancholic poet reading by the window, pining after Fanny and tragically wasting away from the shock of poor reviews.

My visit lifted the veil on that image. In letters from Charles Cowden Clarke and Edward Holmes, I meet the physically powerful, passionate, often boisterous poet. Keats’s first love was fighting. His friends had him picked for a soldier—a robust, fearless young man. That’s why his friends didn’t believe him tubercular.

Downstairs, I swore I saw Fanny outside the window, carelessly reading under the tree. I watch her from the sofa, as he would have, unable to join as he grew weaker and weaker from his illness. For a time, Fanny nursed Keats. Before his departure for Italy, they exchanged locks of hair. She lined his traveling hat with silk and gave him her white cornelian, a stone he kept on him continually.

Now in the garden, I survey the home. Here, where he composed his best poetry, I got to know the more authentic side of the man. It felt intimate. I left as a close friend of his, grateful to have met the real Keats.

Keats-Shelley Memorial House
Rome

The Spanish Steps and I bake under the summer sun as I press through tourists posing for photos and hawkers selling roses. The heat is intolerable, so I slip into the unassuming house next door. It is the house Keats died in and which now stands as a shrine to the Romantics.

The house was bought by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association in 1906. Now it houses more than 8,000 books of Romantic literature—the largest collection in the world.

When I first enter, it feels suffocating. The air is musty, perhaps leftover from the former inhabitants. Eventually, the sensation abates, and I’m left in stillness to pore over every wooden bookshelf and aged letter in the room.

I start against the window, with the traveling desk which an eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley might’ve used to write Frankenstein, the book that would inspire a generation of Gothic literature and give birth to the science fiction genre. Behind glass, I marvel at how well-preserved the locks of Keats’s and Shelley’s hair are. Looming atop a bookcase like Poe’s raven are busts of Shelley and Keats. On the walls, Keats’s death mask, Byron’s Carnival mask, countless portraits, poems, manuscripts, and an urn containing part of Percy Shelley’s jawbone. It borders on obsessive. Luckily, I am a little obsessed.

In the adjoining room, I see where Joseph Severn nursed Keats in the terminal stages of his illness. On the wall opposite the bed, a heartbreaking letter from Severn about Keats’s last night on Earth reads, “I am broken down beyond my strength. I cannot be left alone.” After Keats’s death, Fanny Brawne carried on a mail correspondence with Keats’s sister Frances. Each understood the other’s grief and loss in a way no one else could. While we get to know Keats through his letter to Fanny, we get to know Fanny through her letters to Frances. (None of Fanny’s letters to Keats survive.)

Another couple wait impatiently behind me, and I awkwardly shuffle past them into the space at the foot of the bed. I watch the world out the window as Keats had. I remember that one of the houses on this block is where Byron began writing Canto IV of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1817.

The room fills up. I decide it’s time to rejoin the real world and its blistering heat. I commit every uneven floorboard to memory and draw in a final, deep breath of the place.

The Non-Catholic Cemetery
Rome

“Go thou to Rome—at once the Paradise, the grave, the city, and the wilderness,” writes Shelley in “Adonais,” his elegy for the departed Keats. Not long after Shelley published “Adonais,” he drowned (under mysterious circumstances) in Italy. A copy of Keats’s poetry was found on his body, and now they’re both interred in the same cemetery.

For fans of the Romantics, Rome is an Elysium, and “the holiest place in Rome” (as Oscar Wilde put it) is the Non-Catholic Cemetery. It combines my love of poets, cemeteries, and cats in one utterly spellbinding locale.

A pebbled walkway leads through a mess of low-hanging branches, and I emerge into another world. The towering Pyramid of Cestus casts its shadow over the clearing. The feline residents, or i gatti della piramide (the cats of the pyramid) roam the grounds.

Among ancient trees and flowers in bloom, I spy an old friend. I sit on the bench opposite Keats’s grave for some time, just listening. It’s a place of solemn remembrance, for contemplation. Keats requested a nameless, dateless tombstone; he wanted only the words “Here lies one whose name was writ in water” inscribed there. Severn couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead he and Charles Armitage Brown immortalized on the stone that a poor review of “Endymion” led to his death.

After a time, I trot over to check in with Shelley. Hard against the crumbling wall, a heavy marble slab conceals his ashes. It bears an inscription from The Tempest. The sad, solemn scene of Shelley’s beach cremation springs to mind. Legend has it, Percy’s heart wouldn’t burn in the pyre, and Mary kept it wrapped first in a scarf, then in the pages of “Adonais.” It was Mary’s determination that ensured Percy’s poetry was published posthumously, and thanks to her journals, we have an insight into both their lives.

As I turn to leave, a cat rubs itself against my leg. I can’t help but smile. I can see Keats and Shelley here, in life. By day, Keats would compose lines in the grass, taking in the birdsong and feeding the cats. At dusk, Shelley would muse on theology, hunt for supernatural friends, and admire the faded grandeur of the Pyramid of Cestus.

Sintra
Portugal

In a letter to his mother in 1809, Lord Byron described a “glorious Eden” he had come upon on his Grand Tour of Europe: “The village of Cintra, about fifteen miles from the capital, is perhaps in every respect, the most delightful in Europe; it contains beauties of every description, natural and artificial. Palaces and gardens rising in the midst of rocks, cataracts, and precipices; convents on stupendous heights—a distant view of the sea and the Tagus.”

For wealthy young men at the time, the Grand Tour was considered a rite of passage. It was meant to give young nobles an appreciation of art, literature, and foreign culture. Byron’s tour is detailed in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the poem that made him famous. This was not merely a matter of the writing but of strategy: He was the first poet to create avatars of himself in his poetry and to include his portrait in books.

There are still palaces, gardens, and densely forested woodlands in Sintra, but it has changed significantly since our poets traveled there, unlike the other stops on my pilgrimage. Construction on perhaps the most recognizable Sintra landmark now—the colorful Pena Palace—was not begun until thirty years after Byron visited.

Similarly, the Quinta de Regaleira, the mysterious, Gothic mansion filled with follies and grottos, and steeped in occult symbolism, was built in the 20th century. Despite what’s changed, I found my inspiration here. For me, it was the sprawling, tropical gardens of the Pena Palace, descending the intricately carved stairs of the Quinta de Regaleira’s Initiation Well, and the thickly wooded forest.

Byron was right; Sintra feels entirely enchanting. Except the main town. I’m the first to say it’s a tourist trap. Through its maze of streets, I must pass through the very bowels of Sintra, tracing my way through a tangled mess of cobblestones and cork souvenirs. But when I ascend the Alto Cruze (High Cross), the entire forest shrinks beneath me and the Pena Palace appears as a doll’s house left in the garden. Up here, the town fades away, and I’m left with the Romantic image of it that Byron has painted.

Read more about Phillip Kapeleris’s adventures at phillipkapeleris.com.