Roads Less Traveled: Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth

by Catherine Watson

This collection of Catherine Watson's popular travel essays, often requested by her readers and reprinted by permission from the Star Tribune, spans thirty years and seven continents. Vivid, lyrical, sometimes humorous, always sensitive, her writing leads readers beyond exotic geography and into the rich terrain of the human heart.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

282 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2005

About the author

Catherine Watson, the first travel editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, served as chief travel columnist and photographer from 1978 to 2004. Reaching more than half a million readers weekly, she earned top honors including Travel Journalist of the Year.

Reviews

[shruti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of travel stories from former Star Tribune travel columnist Catherine Watson. I think Watson is an amazing travel writer, and travel writing is something I've always wanted to do, so reading Watson's work is one of my ways of studing some great travel writing.

Of course, with sentences like that previous one, I may never be a great writer, let alone travel writing.

[Angi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catherine Watson's collection of travel essays brought such joy to my life. Especially now during a pandemic where we aren't able to roam around the Earth, I found myself drinking in each word and purposefully reading it as slow as possible. With each new location, I was transported, not just physically, but also chronologically. Even when reading about a place I've explored before, Catherine's words and perspective helped me to experience it from another viewpoint. As if my bucket list of travel destinations wasn't long enough already, she may have doubled it :-) The best thing is that there is a second collection of her work, so my around-the-world trek doesn't have to end yet!!

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of travel accounts both sated my desire to travel and made me want to get on any plane
and go anywhere. What astounding, raw, well-written true stories that easily transport you to unexpected places and happenings. The author is from Minnesota (bonus!) and writes with such sensitivity and honesty. Very inspiring and eye-opening.

[Jenny Fiero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great short stories about place and people from travels around the world. Thank you Catherine Watson.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of essays by a newspaper journalist who is a curious pedestrian explorer who takes time to really observe her surroundings

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read during time of covid. Some places you have probably gone to, some you might go to and some you'll probably never see!

[Gail Pool · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catherine Watson sensed her vocation early. “By high school,” she writes in her author’s note, “I thought of myself as a ‘tourist in life,’ someone whose actual earthly purpose was going away. Only later, when I’d become a journalist, did I comprehend the rest of the assignment: coming back and telling about it.” In Roads Less Traveled, she conveys her enthusiasm both for the traveling and for the telling.

The 40 short essays in the book cover a wide territory, from North Dakota to Turkey, from Newfoundland to Lebanon. Drawn from the pages of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where Watson was travel editor for 30 years, most of the pieces are, as you’d expect, upbeat. In Borneo, she enjoys working with Earthwatch at Camp Leakey, where she and other volunteers “follow” orangutans. In Petra, she is fascinated by the pink sandstone structures of the Treasury. In Antarctica, she is entranced by the wildlife—so entranced she gets too close to a Gentoo penguin chick, who bites her. But she is also willing to be down on commercialized Bali, to reflect on our history in Vietnam, and to face without shirking the poverty in Honduras.

For the most part Watson describes trips that ordinary travelers—her audience—might take. But two of my favorite essays describe more Extreme Adventure. In “Rafting the Himalayas,” she, her guides, and her companion rescue a sacred cow who has somehow managed to get itself stuck in the river’s boulders; and in “To the Top of Africa,” she climbs Mt. Kilimanjaro, a goal she has hoped to achieve since she was seven years old.

These vivid, unpretentious essays skillfully interweave personal anecdote and research, and invite readers into the author’s experience. If some are too slight to make a mark, many, I suspect, might make you think about making the journey yourself. “If you go,” as destination pieces always say—if you decide to watch gray whales in Baja or see the stone fences on the Aran Isles—Watson isn’t the guide to tell you what to do, or where to stay, or what to eat. What she provides, by example, is excellent guidance on how to travel well.

[Monica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up after reading an essay by Watson on Easter Island in a travel story compilation. Watson was a travel writer/editor for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. This is a collection of some of her essays. There are some good ones in here, particularly the one about Cuba, and the one about Paris in winter, among a few others. But I've been flipping through, and I'm just not that inclined to read many of the other essays in here.

[Corrine · Rating 4 out of 5]

My sister, Jan, gave me this book after hearing the writer at a conference. The author is a travel writer for The Minneapolis Tribune and I really like the way she writes about the different places she has visited. I've been lucky enough to have visited many of the same places as the author and the ones I haven't been to yet, she made me want to get them on my list of places to visit.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love books about travel, and this one was great!

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this one. Like you were there-the Taj Mahal was so vivid you could touch it.

[Barb · Rating 5 out of 5]

A re-read. Even though the travels happened several years ago, I love her stories.

[cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

1st book of the year - loved the final essay on the Mississippi River.