Barbara Shaw
BootsnAll Photojournalist
Barbara Shaw was her daddy's travel buddy, fishing off Catalina, exploring the Mojave Desert, swimming in Hawaii, climbing Aztec ruins and camping in Baja. Her yearning to see more got her to India for a summer on a UCLA program then, after graduation, she put in a year of study in Germany and hitching around Europe and the Mid-East . Back in the US, she tried to be good by starting a PhD program, but dropped that and followed the spirit of the 60s to live more broadly, becoming a lab tech, mom, country gardener and creative cook.
With her little son she hitched through Central America and around Europe, and drove the Alcan to work in Alaska. Running a boutique clothing design company, further adventures in the Oregon wilderness, Canada, the Caribbean and South America added up to fun, learning and occasional disasters in the 70s. Meanwhile, each year turned out an album of photos and several bound books of writing.
In the 80s, she ran a contracting company, worked a couple of years in San Francisco at such gigs as writing for the Trivial Pursuit game, then decided to study Journalism. While at the University of Oregon she met writer Joe Henderson and got married, sent her son off to Boston University and later followed him to China, Nepal and India.
In the 90s she wrote a newspaper column on energy issues, and did freelance travel and fitness writing. A highlight was a month off to explore Australia and write about their sports training programs. A couple of years later, fired from her job, she volunteered in Palau, in the South Pacific for three months and gives herself credit for making kayaking adventures a part of the tourism scene there. Time to discover Japan, Thailand and China made her comfortable in Asia. At the end of the decade she fit in a month in Eastern Europe while she continued to explore Mexico and Central America as her Spanish improved.
In the new century, she's still wild about wild places and looking forward to becoming a grandma. Next big adventures include Europe in October and Yucatan in November 2003. Come June 2004, she plans to visit Korea and Mongolia and would like to explore Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos if the right travel buddy appeared.
It sounds like a lot of travel to say you've been to 52 countries, but the other day she met a woman who'd been to 234. OK, she was a travel agent. But for Barb, all of Africa, most of the Pacific, North Asia, Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula all await discovery. And she still dreams of a blue water sailing trip.
Feel free to email Barbara at barbshaw@efn.org. Also look to the left for links to all of Barbara's BootsnAll articles.
