Sommer Duenow

When I was little, I spent hours in a sitting room that didn’t quite belong to the rest of my grandparents’ house.

The carpet was pale ivory, and the furniture the kind of ornate Victorian stylings that made you sit up a little straighter, even as a kid. My grandmother’s porcelain dolls sat atop a vintage cherry secretary, keeping gentle watch over the glass bells and tiny tea sets tucked safely inside a curved cabinet – one that once belonged to my great-grandmother.

It was my favorite space in their home, each knick-knack nestled neatly in its place. I loved being surrounded by objects that held stories from our family history.

The rest of the house was noisy, by comparison – sports blaring from the television, someone always cooking, or voices rising in thick Carolina drawls as they caught up on family gossip. But this room held a hush, a stillness… Like it belonged to another world entirely.

That’s where I discovered National Geographic.

Tucked into the bookcase, beside the fireplace, was a towering stack of their iconic yellow-spined issues, timeworn and sacred in a way I didn’t yet fully appreciate. My paternal grandparents had a lifetime subscription, and to me, those magazines were more than just something to flip through. 

They were windows. Compasses. Portals.

At an age when most kids dreamed of stethoscopes or spotlights, I said I wanted to be a ‘World Traveler’; Not as a fantasy, but as an actual calling. My grandparents, of course, found it endlessly charming… From the mouths of babes, and all.

But I meant it with my whole heart.

I’d lie on the carpet, stretched out on my belly, and open the pages like they were spellbooks. Oceans with secret lives, star systems I couldn’t name, and mountain ranges that looked like they belonged in myth. Some afternoons, I’d read until the real world fell away, only to wake later, dozed off on top of the magazine, dreaming of places I’d never been but somehow felt drawn to.

That was the beginning.

That’s where the ache to know the world began… I didn’t just dream of seeing those places, I longed to understand them. Yes, the photos were beautiful and the facts compelling, but what stayed with me was the sense that the world was far bigger than I’d imagined. 

They also pushed against the beliefs I grew up around – especially the ones that tried to tell me whose lives held more value. Growing up in a deeply racist region, National Geographic gave me the ability to see life through another lens – one I didn’t yet know how to explain, but instinctively understood.

All I knew was that “just the way things are” never felt right in my bones.

Those glossy pages showed me people who looked nothing like me, living lives I couldn’t fathom, and I fell in love with them instantly – their stories, their rituals, their beauty. I learned that, even across continents, the human condition holds.

They gave me permission to ask bigger questions and think for myself; to untangle what I’d been told and to learn to trust my own sense of what felt true.

And no, I didn’t become the world traveler I once imagined I’d be – at least, not in the conventional sense. I’ve never owned a passport, and my adventures have largely remained within the lower forty-eight.

But the girl who dreamed of the Atlas Mountains and the North Sea?

She’s still here.

She just learned to travel differently.

These days, my life asks me to stay close… To be mindful with my time, my energy, and my resources. And in slowing down, something meaningful has emerged: the opportunity to find awe in the small, sacred places that are near.

Now I wander on road trips and wooded trails, down scenic highways and through unfamiliar towns. I explore through storytelling and recipes, and through fireside chats about stars, mystic things, and where we come from.

That childhood curiosity never faded… It grew deeper roots.

It fundamentally shaped how I interact with the world – from the way I cook to the way I meander through the woods, listening. It’s there in my genealogy research, in my parenting, and in how I choose to see the world around me.

My family may be cozy and small – our kiddo won’t grow up with cousins or crowded holiday tables – but they will grow up with a sense of origin, and a sense of meaning. They’ll carry a map, not of places, but of people: the ones whose names we speak out loud, now, and the ones we honor with offerings at our ancestor table.

I don’t know if Little will share my beliefs, or even my curiosities. That’s their path to walk. But what I can offer is a beginning: a sense of where they come from, and how to move through the world with reverence. That part is mine to give.

We still get stacks of National Geographic, now – my mother-in-law brings them when she visits, passing along issues from my late father-in-law’s subscription. They gather on coffee tables and desk corners, waiting for slow afternoons. I don’t read them the way I used to, but they still feel sacred, like an echo from another life that still hums beneath this one.

I sometimes wish I had some of those old issues from my grandparents’ house, but honestly? The memory of them lives deeper than any object ever could. I’ll never be able to forget the hush of that room, or the weight of a magazine in my hands.

Because those magazines? They raised me.

They taught me that roaming the world wasn’t about distance, but about shifting my perspective. It’s about depth and learning to move through this life with wide eyes and the desire to love differently than I was taught.

It’s about a life mapped in meaning, not miles.