In The Iao Valley

Barbara Hand Clow, left, 66, an author and teacher, with her husband, Gerry Clow, 60, a polarity and craniosacral therapist, Feb. 26, 2009. “I had been wanting to go to Maui for about 30 years because my husband comes from a very famous Hawaiian family, the Charles Brewer family. They were originally whalers; his great-great-grandfather arrived in Hawaii on a clipper ship in the 1840s, and the next generation had plantations and ran C. Brewer & Company. So I wanted to explore that and see if I could find remnants. I’ve got 12 books in print including the “Mind Chronicles” trilogy, an exploration of my own past lives. I did 100 sessions under hypnosis, and this is where it gets interesting: I discovered that I was my husband’s grandmother. The deepest reason I went to Maui was to see if it was one of those places that felt like I’d been there before. And it was. Now that I dragged him there we’re going to go back every two years; it’s just exquisite.”

As told to Seth Kugel at The New York Times

Sharing A Photograph

Dr. Dagmar Schmidt Etkin, 53, an environmental research consultant, shows a newly snapped photo to a child in a small village in southern India. “My son had volunteered for the Shanti Bhavan school in 2006, which teaches dalit children, or untouchables, in order to help them get out of poverty and become community leaders. He went back again last year, so I decided to go for a month and see it for myself and do some volunteer work. Each day, we started at 5 a.m. and went until at least 10 at night. I’d take the kids on nature walks, and then I taught classes — chemistry, environmental sciences. The picture is from when I went to see the villages where some of the children come from. They live in fairly nice circumstances at school, but all of them come from very impoverished backgrounds, and it was helpful for me to be able to put everything in context. I really made a connection with the children and staff at the school. I feel like they’re part of my family now. Besides being a chance to be with my son, it was, personally, a wonderful experience.” As told to Austin Considine.

Sun Set

Megan Stewart, 28, an agricultural missionary from Melbourne, Fla. “I’m in Botswana three months out of the year, working for the Livingstone Mission Center. But my husband had never been to Africa, so he went for the holidays. And it was the first time I had been there in their summer, so everything was different because it’s so green. It was a neat experience for me as well. The animals and everything are great, but the thing that blows me away is the culture of Africa. It’s definitely very real and tangible. Everything’s more difficult: for example, it’s very common for them to walk a couple of miles to get to their destination. But when you’re walking a mile to get somewhere, which I have done in Africa many times, you feel your surroundings. There’s more of a fullness of life. When you’re in America and you’re driving in your car, you can’t even remember buildings that you pass by most of the time. In Africa, you see everything." As told to Seth Kugel.

Two Old Friends

Cher Lewis, 58, at right, a retired banker from New York now living in Pietrasanta, Tuscany, with Linda Stark, who splits her time between Australia and Italy, Sept. 10, 2008. “I lived in the West Village for 32 years, on Bank Street for 21. Now I garden, I have chickens and I make olive oil. It’s been seven years now — or eight years, how time goes. Each year you feel more a part of the country you’re in. When I go back, I find it harder and harder to understand what I saw in living in a big city where the values are so different. Here it’s not all about money. It’s more about family and friends. Linda was my twin daughters’ piano teacher when they were 5 years old; she now lives in a town on the other side of the mountains six months a year. We’ve been talking about Sicily for at least four years. It was very rustic, old-fashioned Italy from the movies: you go through small, dusty town after dusty town, with people still farming. In this photo, I’m probably pointing at the capers. One thing I do when I travel is take little pieces of plants and then try to root them in my garden. I ended up taking a bit of caper but it didn’t do too well; I think it’s just not dry enough in Tuscany.” As told to Seth Kugel at NY Times.