VOYAGES
33
P.ISSUE
THE
In a typical year, our spring Voyages Issue arrives just as the cold is
beginning to thaw and readers are packing for the vacations they’ve been
looking forward to all winter. This year, it arrives as we are sheltering in
place, canceling our plans and making preparations to stay home indef-
initely. And that describes the luckiest among us. As I write this, from
New Jersey on March 18, all signs point to a steady worsening of the
pandemic here in America. Rather than traveling the world this spring (my
own family was planning to go to Arizona and raft the Salt River), we’re
hunkered down in our homes, anxiously waiting for the world to come
to us in the form of a virus, fearful of what might happen when it does.
This grim reality has given our Voyages Issue a somber tone. These
stories, some of which were written before the outbreak, are not invi-
tations to travel. None of us should be going anywhere right now (an
alternate cover design for this week’s issue was simply the words “STAY
HOME!” in large block letters). But from our homes, we can think about
the world and our relationship to it. We can learn how it looked to the
four travelers whose voyages to Chernobyl, Venice, Estonia and Turks
and Caicos fi ll these pages. I savored these accounts. At a moment when
borders are closing and travel is mostly forbidden, these stories read
like dispatches from a world that we did not fully appreciate, one in
which we were free to move around the globe. We hope they provide
Icon illustration by Francesco Muzzi/StoryTK you with some comfort. And we hope you’re safe. — Jake Silversteinjxs