I Married a Travel Junkie

When I re-married, I thought Nancy and I would settle in a bucolic section of Massachusetts, a place where the cows meet the sea. That was before I discovered I had married a travel junkie. Where I envisioned walks along quiet beaches, her sights were set on stakeouts beside the Serengeti National Park’s Grumeti River watching crocodiles take down a baboon. I didn’t want to come within six thousand miles of a crocodile. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to let her go alone. Traveling with her for 16 years, I have done my best to understand not only the extraordinary people and places we have visited, but my own neurosis. I studied my anxiety across forty countries, including seven terrifying trips to Africa, from the Serengeti to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Slowly I began to accept the profound differences between my wife and me. Although terrified by my experiences, I have learned from them, most especially from an encounter in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest with an angry female gorilla. She offered me a key insight into my marriage and myself. I owe that gorilla more than she’ll ever know. I Married a Travel Junkie is a chronicle of these journeys.