One of my goals for this gap year was to read the right books at the right moments. Whenever I travel, I promise myself I’ll read the classic tome of my destination, but rarely do I really get farther than buying and lugging it along. This time is different.

I’ve read Darwin in the Galapagos, Isabel Allende in Chile, Mark Adams on Machu Picchu, and explorer  travel logs while in the Amazon. I’ve read about Condamine’s struggles to prove the bulgy shape of the Earth by measuring distances at the equator (in Ecuador) by painstakingly using wooden measuring poles to measure miles of uneven ground. I am toting Shackleton’s Endeavor and Chatwin’s classic, In Patagonia for the upcoming months.

Reading makes me into the typical North American know-it-all, nodding along when the guide points out a Incan window that aligns with a solstice, or a river otter that is coming back from the brink of extinction.

The kids are definitely tired of hearing me say, “I read something interesting about…” , or “Did you know that…”, but then again, they are pretty much sick of everything I say by now, in the middle of month five.