Trevor Huxham

The city of Houston on the Gulf Coast of Texas is tightly intertwined with the three years I was able to spend living and working in Spain. As a resident of Texas, I was required to make the journey to the Spanish consulate in Houston to formally submit my application for a visa that would let me live in the country during the upcoming school year. But because I wasn’t able to renew my legal status during the summers I spent back home in Dallas, I had to return to Houston not once, but twice, to do the same thing, all over again. Safe to say, I got to know the Megabus route and the Hostelling International hostel fairly well. These brief, bureaucratic business trips left much to be desired, apart from a visit to see a Saturn V rocket out on the bay. Yet this vast city (the fourth biggest in the U.S.) has one of the best restaurant scenes in the country, with multiple culinary influences all contributing flavors, ingredients, methods, and more. In fact, the greater Houston metropoli...

Rainbow Bridge Natural arches are one of those things that make sense to you on an intellectual level. Of course they can stand up without any external support; an arch is one of the most stable forms known to physics. But on a human level, they float in the air almost as if they’re alive, as if either end of the arch is a massive, giant leg. Rainbow Bridge is one such natural arch that makes your whole face light up the first time you see it. In fact, it’s one of the world’s tallest arches (and far more impressive than Arches National Park’s Delicate Arch, made famous by Utah’s state license plate). But tucked away as it is deep in Utah’s backcountry, Rainbow Bridge is one of the most isolated national monuments in the country. Rainbow Bridge peeking out with Navajo Mountain in the background Before the Colorado River was plugged up by Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s, Rainbow Bridge required a 6-mile hike uphill from the canyon floor—not to mention running the river south ...

Wild open spaces have been important to me ever since I was a little kid. During recess or Field Day in middle school, my classmates and I would often hang out in the creek behind the school building on former farmland in the exurbs north of Dallas . We built little shelters out of dried brush plants, blazed trails, and even explored the riparian ecosystem on a greenbelt north of the property. All this unstructured time was a formative experience for me because it gave me freedom to play, imagine, and breathe. Experiences like this are why I keep going back to the wilderness as an adult and why I did a day-hike in the fantastic landscapes northwest of Lake Powell over last Veterans Day weekend. The Wahweap Hoodoos Five reasons why wilderness is important It’s undeveloped and untouched by industry.  In contrast to National Parks, state parks, or even city parks, federal wilderness areas by their very nature lack developed facilities and remain off-limits to extractive ...

Hanging ristras My breath condensed into a steamy vapor in front of my face, a rare sight in Phoenix. I wasn’t ready for 40 degrees in early October, and the lone Patagonia puff jacket I had packed was barely enough to keep me warm as I walked on sidewalks strewn with glossy, wet leaves. Thankfully, the heater was on full blast at the Georgia O’Keefe Museum. Bella Donna by Georgia O’Keefe I’ve been a huge fan of this New Mexican artist ever since my high school art teacher first exposed me to her work. When I moved to Phoenix three years ago and finally saw some of her paintings hanging in the Phoenix Art Museum, I decided I had to go on a pilgrimage to Santa Fe to her eponymous museum. The collection isn’t that large (I spent only 45 minutes exploring it), but the works it comprises make the trek to Santa Fe totally worth it. I even saw some paintings of O’Keefe’s I wasn’t familiar with that featured The Black Place, some badlands in the New Mexican wilderness made up o...

Because I spent my childhood in Plano, Texas, going to my hometown’s balloon festival year after year, Albuquerque’s own festival that rivals Plano’s has long been on my bucket list. Even after moving to the Southwest, though, I wasn’t sure how I would plan a trip to experience this celebration of ballooning—after all, Phoenix is still six hours away from Albuquerque, New Mexico, by car. The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is the world’s largest, with well over 500 registered balloonists. On any day of the weeklong fiesta, you can expect to bump into crowds of 100,000 people as you explore the balloon take-off fields. Close-up of colorful balloons With numbers like that, it might seem nigh on impossible to ever visit the fiesta. Enter one late September weeknight of grabbing drinks with friends. While sipping on some Phoenix brews, I got to talking with my friend Dolores, who’s originally from New Mexico. She happened to mention in passing that the following weekend ...

As you head down a curve of the busy San Pedro street, you catch your first view of the twin bell towers of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela—and you catch your breath. Petite hatchbacks rattle across the cobblestone as your feet seem drawn farther down the path, although that might just be gravity pulling you downhill toward the old zone. You cinch up your backpack’s sternum strap for the final approach of this multiple-night pilgrimage. For not the first time on your Camino, you lose your sense of direction as you enter Santiago’s old town: granite flagstones at your feet, stone-and-graying-plaster houses on either side, and overcast skies above disorient you—yet your eyes eventually lock on to a spray-painted yellow arrow on the side of a building. Once you’re back on autopilot, you start to reflect on why you started this crazy, 70-mile-plus hike in the first place. Rúa de San Pedro, Santiago de Compostela Maybe you hiked from Sarria farther inland as a cheap and hea...

One of the hardest parts on your journey to fluency in a language is just that—having the language literally “flow” off your tongue in conversation. You’re always going to sound like you’re a foreigner as long as you use disjointed, robotic speech and hesitate from one phrase to the next, even if you manage to communicate whatever message you’re trying to get across with the correct vocab or grammar. Ferrol Is Cool street art in Ferrol, Spain If you want to take the next the step toward having natural, fluid speech in Spanish, you’ve got to have a firm grasp on the kind of words that help you have a back-and-forth conversation with someone—words that you rarely get taught when taking formal classes in school. I’ve put together a list of 76 extremely useful words, phrases, expressions, and interjections that Spaniards commonly sprinkle into things to show they’re interested in whatever you’re talking about. These words are crucial to have a conversation with someone, but they’...