Heather Greenwood Davis is a Contributing Writer and on-air storyteller for National Geographic, as well as a freelance Feature Writer with The Globe and Mail. Heather has been reporting and writing stories professionally for more than 20 years. A recognized expert in the industry, her work appears regularly in print and digital publications. Heather regularly appears as a trusted expert on television and radio, and has shared insights from the stages of conferences and trade gatherings hosted by TravMedia, US Travel Association, Destination Canada, SATW and others. Her travels and experiences have also been featured in O Magazine and on NPR.
Heather was named a National Geographic Traveler of the Year in 2012 after her family of four spent a year traveling around the world, sharing their insights through articles and social media. Though her work encompasses far more than traditional family travel stories, she is also the voice behind GlobetrottingMama.com – an international, family travel blog that features the adventures she takes with (and without) her husband Ish and their two sons, Ethan and Cameron.
In this episode, Heather and Bryan discuss:
- Heather’s transformative year-long trip with her family, sharing stories about countries they visited and friends they made along the way
- How this trip benefited her young children, who came back more confident and with a wider perspective
- Heather’s unique shift into becoming a world-renowned travel journalist, and how social media played a role in her rise
Transcript:
Bryan Wish:
Heather, welcome to the One Away Show.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Bryan Wish:
Thank you. Well, I reached out because I just kind of found your background fascinating, and here we are. But we’re going to dive in and share your one away moment. What is coming up for you? What is the one away moment you want to share with us today?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Well, I would say that my one away moment is probably in 2007 when, after leaving a career in law, I came home prepared to start a freelance life, and my husband came home not long after and said that he had an opportunity to take a year off of work. So if he took home 80% of his pay for four years, but worked the same amount of time, then in the fifth year, he could have that paid back and he could skip work for a year. And we had two little kids at the time, and we thought about it and said, “You know what? We’re going to do it.” Because we had always talked about the fact that we wanted to take a year and travel the world, and we decided that we weren’t going to let the kids stop us. And so in 2007, we made that decision.
Bryan Wish:
Okay. Bold, brave, crazy adventure.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
All of the above. Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
All the above. Okay. I’d love to maybe know a little… Well, first question. This was a shared dream or vision for you both? Is that correct?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. Yeah. My husband and I have been together since my last year of high school-
Bryan Wish:
Wow.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
… so we have a long history, and we’re very old now. So we have a long history together. And when we got married, we were like, “This marriage isn’t going to stop us from traveling and seeing the world, right?” We’re like, “No, no, absolutely not.” And we continued to travel. And then we had our first child, and that totally threw a wrench into things, or seemed to have the potential to throw a wrench into things. And we were like, “We’re still going to travel the world and do all kinds of things.” And we were both like, “Yeah, we are,” but it wasn’t coming along as quickly as we thought it would. And so when he came home and said this in 2007, my oldest would’ve been about five at that point. It really struck a nerve with me because it was something we’d wanted to do, and here was an opportunity, it seemed, to do it.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah, absolutely. What an empowering journey ahead, which I can’t wait to get into. I would love to maybe go back, though, a little bit.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Sure.
Bryan Wish:
You talked about, it was your husband and your goal all along to do it, but then you had a kid and maybe it got a little bit harder.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
And then, yeah, you throw yourself in your jobs, and life just gets away, and then, okay, well, you wait until you’re 55 or 60 when the kids are older and you just do it. But you said, “No, I’m going to do it now.” What was your biggest fear, right, to say, “Kids aren’t going to stop us. We’re going to be super unconventional and we’re going to go for it”? What were some of the things that you had to overcome and maybe work through, whether that’s with yourself, with people around you?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
Just take us back to that moment.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
By that point of my life, by the time we said yes to this trip to each other, I wasn’t afraid, because I had just been in a career. So I am a journalist by training. I went to journalism school. After journalism school, I worked at a newspaper, and then I kind of just fell into a law career. It was not my intention. I ended up scoring well on an LSAT on a bit of a dare. And then because I had scored well on the LSAT, I just followed the stones, right? So did well on the LSAT, so I went to law school. Went to law school and was prepared to come back to journalism, and instead got an offer from a law firm that made it tempting, and some encouragement from the newspaper I was at to pursue this law degree.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And suddenly I was down this rabbit hole with law that I had never, ever intended to go down. So when I left law in 2007, because I realized after having my son that I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. I’d always loved writing. I wanted to get back to that. That for me was the harder decision. I was walking away from the potential of a career that could make me wealthy. It meant that I was taking away opportunities. My kids’ private school was out as a travel writer compared to a lawyer. There were a lot of decisions that were going to be different. And so that was difficult. So leaving that and then coming to make this decision to follow what I believed to be true about the world, that it was going to be open and warm and kind to us, and that we should go and explore it, and it would be better for my kids if we did, that was an easier choice.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Well, that’s beautiful. And what I’ll say is, maybe you might have been worried about the kids didn’t maybe go to private school and maybe a more homogenous type of education, but no, they got a worldly education-
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Absolutely.
Bryan Wish:
… that they’ll have in their back pocket or carry with them for the rest of their life.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
They do. Absolutely, they do.
Bryan Wish:
Very cool. Well, I mean, I’m sure it was scary, but like you said, you were ready, you were brave, and it wasn’t going to stop you. Now, take me back to… This might be a weird and open question, but yeah, your husband, back in the day, high school sweethearts? Is that-
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah, pretty much.
Bryan Wish:
I haven’t heard that since my grandparents. That’s amazing. I mean, you guys in high school, were you always adventurous? Were you guys more kind of functional, kind of check this box, check that box, or was it… I’m just curious, what were you guys like before life got real and adulthood kind of came into its own?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
I don’t think we were that different, but we didn’t go to the same high school. My husband’s older than I, so I was in my last year of high school and he was already in college when we met. And then I went away to school twice. So this isn’t a love story where we met and then were never, ever apart. I went and pursued my own dreams, but we just stayed connected the whole time. And so it’s kind of great. When you know somebody for that long, you really are sort of growing and becoming yourself with that person, you know? And so there was no big change in who we were. He probably traveled less than I. My family traveled when I was a kid. We traveled throughout Canada and the US and the Caribbean a lot, but when I was a kid, we’d never been beyond that.
Bryan Wish:
Wow.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
So I don’t know where it came from, but he definitely followed me into travel and fell in love with it.
Bryan Wish:
That’s amazing. So just to be clear for the story’s sake, you guys were kind of off and on throughout that period, or you-
Heather Greenwood Davis:
No.
Bryan Wish:
Oh, you [inaudible 00:07:15] stayed together?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. Completely together-
Bryan Wish:
Wow.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
… but just in different cities, long distance, the whole nine yards.
Bryan Wish:
I think you guys need to write a book on commitment.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Maybe.
Bryan Wish:
Good. That’d be good for our times of today where you can just swipe left and right.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
[inaudible 00:07:31].
Bryan Wish:
So let’s talk about this. You made the decision, you guys went for it. How’d you decide what was next? You had to give up the luxury of the pay that would come with law. Travel writing isn’t as maybe financially luxurious, but is also a incredibly, I’m sure, uplifting and fulfilling role.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Absolutely.
Bryan Wish:
But what were your first few steps, both for you and your husband?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Okay. So 2007, he comes home and he says that he can get that year. And honestly, for me, that moment switched a mindset for me, because what happened in that moment is suddenly everything I was going to do going forward was being measured against the fact that I was going to be leaving in four years. So it was, do I need to go and spend 100 bucks at this store on this candle set or something? I’m only going to be able to use it for about four years or three years or two years as we are going forward. And so cash spending decisions were different.
Bryan Wish:
Wow.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
It just sort of shortened the span of time that we had to be concerned about things, because we were leaving in four years. And for the kids, we didn’t tell them until we were just about ready to go-
Bryan Wish:
Wow.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
… like a couple months out or something, because they were so little. So yeah, so it probably didn’t affect their world as much, but for me, it definitely changed the way that I thought about things in the lead up.
Bryan Wish:
Okay. So did you find that freeing or liberating in a way?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
It was absolutely freeing, and it only got better.
Bryan Wish:
Tell me more.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
It only got better. Well, let me tell you that as a parent, when you have little kids, what happens quite quickly is you start off, you’ve got this baby and it’s all yours, and you’re at home, and you don’t have to really share it. It’s just yours and whoever comes to visit. And then as they get to school age and they begin to attend school, and suddenly they’re in all kinds of classes and karate lessons and swimming lessons, and you’re worried that you’re not going to expose them to whatever that one thing is that they are going to be the absolute best talent at, right? What if I never gave my kids hockey, and what if they’re meant to be the best hockey player? There’s all this stress and angst that parents take on as their kids get to school.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And then in addition to that, your kids are being exposed, yes, to other kids and however they’re being raised, but they’re also being exposed to other adults and authority figures. And you start to see in your child some doubt and some self-esteem issues that you weren’t necessarily encountering. So for me, I had one son who was really shy. One was really concerned about what the friends at school thought. All of those kinds of thinking and concerns were starting to sort of show up. And here at home, we were feeling the pressure of, we can’t sit down for dinner tonight because Dad’s taking someone to karate and Mom’s taking someone to swimming, and then we got to come back and do homework.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And there were just all of these outside pressures on really little kids. And then the other thing I remember that really struck me before we left was that there were the bell at school. So I went in to help with a class science in the school type project or something in one of their classrooms and realized that the bell goes off all the time at school. And it’s almost Pavlovian, right? Eat your lunch, stop your lunch, go for recess, come back from recess. It’s just constantly, and it’s this pressure that as parents we’re not even really aware of because we’re out of that space. So for me, the ability to clear everything off the plate, take these kids and my husband and just run away from all of it for a year was liberating and exciting, and I felt like I was saving them. That’s what it felt like.
Bryan Wish:
Wow. You used the words run away.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
I mean, it doesn’t sound like a runaway. It’s more like a step into a different way of living, went from a functional, restrictive, check these six boxes today, to a fluid, spontaneous, we’re going to go adventure for a year kind of way.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. And I mean, we embraced it as a no rules situation. So we decided that we weren’t going to know exactly where we were going when we left. We had a few tickets to start us off. We had a connection here at a travel agent, a connection in the sense that we hired a travel agent to help us plot our route as we went. We had a list of places that we were interested in visiting, but we really wanted to be in control of our time. We wanted to eat when we were hungry, sleep when we were tired, leave a place because we were ready to leave, not because our prearranged itinerary said we had to leave that day. So it was a very luxurious, not in a financial way at all, but luxurious in the amount of time we had kind of way to travel. We really went with our whims.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. And sounds like a lot of just freedom.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. It was. It was.
Bryan Wish:
And not so much in… Yes, I think I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom, from, yes, freedom of choice, but freedom to make decisions aligned with your values. And it seems like that blend, you’re able to achieve on both sides.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. And you were able to, as a parent, also impart those values fully onto our kids. They’ve been imprinted with those values. They know what we think of the world, and they understand what we think of people and the values we place in equity and equality and allowing people to be whoever they are and embracing that. All of those values we were able to share without sitting them down for a lecture and hoping they got it in 15 minutes. We embraced a lifestyle through travel that just exposed them to things, and they were able to watch and see how we behaved in situations and to take that on as their own.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. So cool. I don’t know. I just was talking to someone, and he was telling me about how they’re trying to create more leap years between high school and college. But you created a leap year for yourself as an adult, but for your kids at such a formative early age that shaped their worldview. Tell me this. What were some of the places that you went first, and what was most surprising, and what did you learn about yourself, more importantly, through some of your experiences at these different physical locations?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. I mean, over the course of the year, we hit 29 countries on six continents. So we were moving. So this trip had two purposes. On the one hand, it was about family and about being together and values and all of that. And the other side of it was professionally, as a young mom, I couldn’t travel very far as a travel writer, because I couldn’t go for long because I needed to be back to be with the kids. So this was an opportunity as well. We definitely chose places thinking, “Let’s go to the far away spots so that when we come back and Mom goes back to work, then she can run away to the Caribbean or the US or what have you. Those are easy, quick trips.”
Heather Greenwood Davis:
So we started out, we went west through Canada. I’m based in Toronto, and we went west across the provinces to British Columbia. And then we went into South America, and we spent time in Argentina and Peru and you name it. And probably the first big shock, I would say, to the system, the first place where we felt like we had to readjust our approach a little bit would be China. So we did 30 days in China. We sort of did the common C, so we went in through Beijing, Xi’an, Chengdu. Who am I missing? Guangzhou, I think, and then Shanghai.
Bryan Wish:
Wow.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Over a course of 30 days. And for me, that was a really formative period. It was difficult. We don’t have any language there outside of people who were speaking English. We didn’t have that. We stand out. We’re a Black family. We look different than people there, so we were noticed for sure. But it was great, because the thing about travel that I think I enjoy the most and that makes it the best learning experience is that the further you travel from home, the more vulnerable you’re required to be. It just comes with the territory. You’re going to be somewhere and not know how to get somewhere else. Right?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
You’re going to have to depend on the kindness of a stranger to figure out where you can eat or what you can eat or where’s a good place to stay or what neighborhood you should be in. You’re going to have to depend on other people, and as a result, you’re going to have to be vulnerable. You can’t walk into those situations asserting that your way is the only way, because you don’t know anything about this place. And that vulnerability I found, and because we were so far from home for so long, really was probably the greatest reward of the whole thing. We met so many great people as a result of it.
Bryan Wish:
That’s a beautiful insight. The further you’re away, the more vulnerable you were, but that vulnerability led you to operating so far outside your comfort zone, but also forcing you to cultivate relationships with people on the homeland to maybe help you navigate a little more easily.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Bryan Wish:
If anything comes up, I’d be curious. When you talked about those moments where you were most vulnerable, do any experiences come to mind that were oh shit moments?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. So many.
Bryan Wish:
All right. Share [inaudible 00:18:18].
Heather Greenwood Davis:
So many. So I remember in China, at one point we landed in Chengdu, and somehow I had misread the train times and we ended up coming out of the train station with these two little kids at what was probably four o’clock in the morning. Pitch black outside. Outside of the Chengdu train station, a lot of locals will just… It could be a sign of poverty, but it’s not necessarily a sign of poverty, but people will just roll out a piece of cardboard and lay outside the station while they wait for the train that they’re supposed to get on. So you can imagine at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, we walk out. There are people lying all over the ground outside. It’s pitch black.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And we’re like, “Okay, no problem. We’re just going to hop in a cab and go to our hotel,” only to realize that we had forgotten in China… One of the best pieces of advice I can give someone is that you should always get your destination written in Chinese characters on a piece of paper, because a lot of the cab drivers don’t speak English, right? I’m in China. It’s expected. So we forgot to do that.
Bryan Wish:
Oh, no.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And so we come out in the middle of the night, we go to try to get a cab, and the cab drivers are trying to talk to us in Mandarin or Cantonese, and we of course can’t respond. And it’s getting elevated because all of the cab drivers are seeing that this is a potentially great fair. Here’s four people are trying to get a cab, and so they start fighting with each other, and there’s arguments, and we don’t know what to do. We have nowhere to go, we don’t know what to do. And this man walks by. I just sort of see him out of the corner of my eye. Older gentleman, Chinese man walks by, and I see him look at us, keep walking, and then he gets to the corner, gives this heavy sigh, turns around and comes back and says to us, “Do you need help,” in English.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And, “Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. Yes. This is the situation. We’re trying to get here. And I made the mistake. I didn’t do this or whatever.” And he goes, “Okay, where are you trying to go?” And he said, “Okay, give me a minute.” And he negotiates with these people. Really, I don’t know here in Toronto or if I was in New York, would I just trust that this wasn’t some sort of con or what have you. But we were in such a state and so desperate that we had to be vulnerable, and this guy turned out to be the greatest thing. So he not only negotiated the fair for us and spoke to them about where we were going and got rid of the cabs that weren’t really cabs that were trying to get us in their cars and then probably charge us a little more or whatever. And he got us in a cab. He came in the cab with us-
Bryan Wish:
My God.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
… to make sure we got where we were going. And then when we got there, we were overwhelmed. We’re like, “We got to take you for breakfast, and we’ve got to what have you.” And so we have this conversation with him, and he basically said to us, he said, “You know, I wasn’t going to stop because I figure, here are two tourists. They should know better. Why should I stop and get involved in this situation? And then I saw the kids.” And he said, “When I saw that you were a family, I knew I couldn’t leave you in the dark on a street corner in a foreign place. That wasn’t the situation I wanted to leave you in.” And so he helped. He didn’t have to, and he helped.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And that’s just one. I mean, we met a tuk-tuk driver in Cambodia on our first day there. He just happened to be sitting outside of the place we were staying. So my husband is a bit of a talker, and so he was chatting with him as we unloaded our stuff, and we paid him and he went on his way, but that was kind of his post. And so my husband would go out and chat with him every morning or every afternoon, whenever he was there. And if we needed to go somewhere, we would hire the same guy and go. And the night before we were supposed to leave, he sort of sheepishly came up to us and said, “I was telling my wife about you. I would love to have you meet my family. Do you want to come to my home?”
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And we were like, “Yeah.” So we went to his house, which was one room in a… He’s a tuk-tuk driver. He doesn’t have a ton of money. He’s not in a big, fancy house. It’s just this one room that had a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, sort of all in one room. We sat on the floor around a hot pot with his wife and the baby. And she had very little English, but it didn’t matter. We had this wonderful evening. Neighbors were peeking in the door like, “Why is this weird family of four sort of encroaching on this little space?” And it’s one of the best memories. We laughed late into the night. He took us back to the hotel later. But I’m like, “What do my kids learn in a situation like that?” They learn that people can be kind. They learn that you’re supposed to open yourself up to opportunities to get to know people. There’s just so much there that they can walk away from that you’re not going to get in a classroom at school.
Bryan Wish:
Whew.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And breathe.
Bryan Wish:
I’m just going to take it all in. That’s a lot to process. I mean, I think both stories just show the human condition in such a raw form, that people will take you in and embrace you and extend a helping hand without even knowing you, but then you also being open to receiving that help. It takes two, right?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
And it’s like, “No, I don’t need to do this all on my own.” And [inaudible 00:24:21]-
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And I can’t.
Bryan Wish:
Right. And you’re going to go with the wave of the experience and let it take you where it’s supposed to, opposed to forcing it a certain way, which, like you said, when you throw yourself in those vulnerable moments, it’s all you can do.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Right. Right. And I think that’s the difference, is that I think most of us probably encounter situations that could be those situations in our regular lives. I don’t think you have to travel around the world to strike up a conversation with the guy who’s driving your cab. Right? That doesn’t have to happen. But the difference is the confidence and sort of arrogance we carry at home, that dissipates when you’re traveling. So you’re open to it in a different way.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Oh my God. So wild. So your two beautiful boys in your photo behind you.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Oh, yeah.
Bryan Wish:
How old were they when they went on this trip?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
They were… Let me think now. We went in 2011. I think they were five and seven, but quickly turned six and eight.
Bryan Wish:
Got it.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
So I think when we left, they were officially five and seven, but they quickly turned six and eight, and yeah. And now they are 19 and 17.
Bryan Wish:
Unbelievable. So your 19- and 17-year-old boys, how do you think… When they look back on this trip, if I was sitting in front of them and I said, “Hey, kids, how did your experience as a younger child, how did that shape you once you came back,” what do you think they would say?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
They would have so much to say. They get asked a lot. The 17-year-old was the one that was really shy. First of all, almost immediate, that was the thing that struck me. It’s not that it took years and years after he came back for us to see sort of the difference in him immediately. We came back, they went to school end of September, so we returned in the summer, and they went back to school end of September. And within weeks of going back to school, he came home and said, “So-and-so at school says they’re not going to be my friend anymore,” within weeks, which is exactly what we had left when we left the year before. And I sort of held my breath and said, “Well, how do you feel about that? What did you say?” And he says, “I told him I got friends in France.”
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And that, to me, sums up exactly how they came back. They came back as far more confident kids who understood that the world was bigger than the neighborhood they were growing up in. And what happens then is, if your whole world isn’t in the four blocks around your house, then the things that happen in those four blocks begin to not be as big. You know? So a kid at school not liking you here, but knowing that you’ve made friends in places all around the world, suddenly that kid here, it’s like, “Oh, all right. You can’t win them all.”
Heather Greenwood Davis:
But you move on from it in a different way than if that kid is the center of your universe. And so both of them sort of carried this confidence forward through school. They are very independent people. They have great circles of friends around them, but I’ve never encountered any kind of peer pressure issues. They’re very open with us. We remain a very, very close, almost shockingly close family of four, because of all this time we spent together. And yeah, I’m really proud of it. And I totally believe that it’s the travel and that experience of bonding away from home that did it.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Unbelievable. And in those vulnerable moments, the people who help you through become those lifelong relationships, whether it’s sports, emotional relationship, traveling the world. Right?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
So I think that what you’re saying is, “Yeah, it was my family, but it wasn’t just because they’re my family. I mean, of course they’d always be blood, but we did a super adventurous, challenging, hard, brave adventure, and we all grew individually, but we all grew collectively.”
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. Absolutely. And they are cool people I really enjoy.
Bryan Wish:
Cool.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. I love being around them. They are interesting people with opinions and ideas. Cameron, my youngest, is now a social activist. He runs his own business. He’s 17. He runs his own business. He co-founded a group here in our area that fights for social justice issues, and it’s incredible. And my older son, he doesn’t do the same thing. He’s not necessarily someone who’s going to stand up in front of a crowd and do things, but he makes decisions along the way about helping people and what he cares about along the way that I’m equally proud of. They’re just great people.
Bryan Wish:
Wow. I heard a quote a couple months ago, and it said, “The parent’s only as happy as their least happiest kid.” And it sounds like as a mom, and I’m sure as your husband, you guys sound so proud, and there’s so much joy for the people that they have become, which you got to give a lot of credit to yourselves as well. You shaped and developed.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Somewhat. But I feel like what we did, at least with the travel, is provide an opportunity. And I recognize not everybody can provide that opportunity. And listen. When we provided it, we couldn’t… You’re not looking at a family that was wealthy or had life savings that they could just sort of tap into. We emptied everything we had. We sold things. We rented things. We did whatever we could to make that trip happen. And we paid for it for years and years and years to come. I’d say it took us a decade to pay off that trip. But what it gave us? Well worth it.
Bryan Wish:
Oh my God. That’s blessed. Good. That’s amazing. So I know we’ve gotten super tight into the onion, to the core of it. I would love to hear about, on a lighter note, some of the experiences, some of the places that you went that you weren’t expecting to be like what you had thought, or places that just blew you away. Yeah. It’s super open-ended question, but you guys did so much in a short amount of time, so I’d love to know.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
We did. Yeah. I mean, I could tell you, there’s a story for every place. On the way back, we stopped in Portugal. Portugal was not on our list of places to visit when we left home. We actually were supposed to go to Greece. I specifically wanted to go to the Greek Islands, and somehow just the way our timing worked out, we were going to get to Europe in May, I think, and it was just not going to be warm enough to make sense to go there. That was the other thing, is we followed the sun through this whole thing. I’m from Canada. I was born and raised here. I’ve had enough snow for a lifetime, so we wanted sunshine and warm weather the whole time, and so Greece was just going to be too cold.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And so we just sort of looked at the map and were like, “Okay, well, where’s warm right now? And we’re just going to bide our time for a couple of days, and then we’ll head into Spain.” And so Portugal was the winner, and we went over there for what was supposed to be two nights and ended up staying for two weeks. And it was the only time on this entire trip where I was dead serious that we weren’t going to go any further. I thought, “We are going to buy a home here and we’re going to live here now.” And this was the purpose of the trip. Who knew? But it was to find Portugal and to move here forever.
Bryan Wish:
Wow.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And they had to drag me kicking and screaming out of that country. I absolutely loved it. People were so kind to us there. The weather was great. The food was great. The approach to life is so non-North American. I absolutely loved it.
Bryan Wish:
So it was weird you brought up Portugal off that question. I have been a Portugal seeker for the last few years for a lot of reasons.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Okay.
Bryan Wish:
You said you’d been forced to drag, kick, scream out of the country, and it was so non what you’d known.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Non-North American. Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
What was it about Portugal that just had you maybe supplanted?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
I love that place so much. I’ve been back twice since, and we’re making plans to go again. Portugal… People talk about Old World Europe, right? And usually when they’re talking about that, I think they’re referring to buildings and sort of a genteelness or something that they imagine of Europe. But for me, Portugal was old school in the sense that the values that I embrace, that you should be kind to people, that you’re considerate. My kids know that my pet peeve is people that are rude. And there, I just found that people totally embrace those same ideas. They are so kind to the elderly. I’ll give you a couple examples.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
So one is, I remember we went for dinner one night, and I think this was in Lisbon. We went for dinner one night. It was a small sort of mom and pop type restaurant, but it was full, pre-pandemic, obviously. It was full. And we were there, and my husband said to the waiter… The waiter came over. We had some wine. He said, “What can I get you guys today?” And my husband said, “I can’t decide. What do you think I should have?” And the waiter said, “One second.” And he went and said something to another waiter, who then went and helped some other tables.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And this guy came and sat down with us, literally sat down with us at the table, and then started going through the menu with my husband, like, “Okay, so are you feeling this or this? Okay, well, this is like… Oh, this was my grandmother’s recipe.” Who does that? There’s just such a leaning into the humanity of situations there that I loved. If I had done that in a restaurant here, the guy would have said, “I like the chicken,” and he’d have moved on, right, and nobody would’ve expected anything more. But this guy really wanted us to have a great meal and just sort of leaned into it.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Another moment was, we were on a street corner in Portugal trying to hail a cab. And finally, no cabs were coming. It was sort of a residential area. And we finally found one, and the guy pulled over and he said, “Where are you going?” And for me, I don’t know for you, but for me, that’s always a sign, because to me it’s like, oh, you’re going to make a decision now about whether you’re going to take me based on how big the fare is. And so I already had my backup, and he said, “Where are you going? But before you tell me, let me explain what the situation is.” And he says, “I have to go to X place to pick somebody up to take them somewhere. So if you’re on the way to there, I can take you there. But if you’re not, you’re in a really difficult place to catch a cab, so let me call somebody to come and meet you here so that you can have a cab to go.” Who does that?
Bryan Wish:
Wow.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
It was just a series of kind gestures in this place. I loved that you would go for lunch and nobody would ever rush you from that table. I could go for lunch at 11:00 and still be there at 4:00-
Bryan Wish:
Wow.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
… and nobody’s moving you. No. They’re like, “No, enjoy the space, enjoy the time, enjoy the meal. No pressure to order something new.” And people talk to each other. It’s just a wonderful, wonderful culture. Loved it.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Well, everything you said makes a lot of sense from the few people who have told me to go, but it seems like you had a really enriching experience on a multitude of occasions. But yeah, you can just hear the passion in your voice and electric kind of feel and fire you have towards the place.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
So cool. Would love to talk a little bit… By the way, thanks for sharing so personally, intimately, openly, and experientially-
Heather Greenwood Davis:
No worries.
Bryan Wish:
… I mean, just what travel does for people.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
It can really open people up. For you, [inaudible 00:37:49] a professional note. I mean, it seems like your career has also taken a pretty cool trajectory.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
I mean, I don’t want to box you in, but I mean, I feel like every woman’s dream job is, and maybe men too, but to be a travel journalist. Right?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
And you’re doing it. That’s you. I’d love to know how you made it happen on the career side. You broke into something very difficult.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
You know what? But again, we started off this conversation asking me about what’s that one moment, and again, I would say that the thing that broke open my travel writing career was that trip. Because what it required was, we had to take a leap and do something different, and that trip totally, at the time, set us apart. So much so that when we returned in June 2012, we were named as a family by National Geographic as travelers of the year. Yeah, I thought it was really cool that my six-year-old can walk around saying at six, he was National Geographic traveler of the year.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
So it definitely got the attention of a lot of people when we decided to do that. And I think also that traveling for that year in that way, because at that time, Twitter was really big, and I was tweeting as I went more from a… I would say that it was also a self-preservation thing, because often when you’re traveling, I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but often when you’re traveling in places that are very different to what you know at home, you notice things that are different, that would be different to no one… Only people at home would recognize that this is different, right, or see how it’s the opposite of what you would do, or why you might feel uncomfortable in a situation, or how come you don’t know where to turn, or those sorts of things.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
People in the area, that’s just life, right? That’s just the normality of things. And so what I loved about Twitter at that time is it gave me this opportunity to sort of reach back to home and say, “Hey, this is what I’m seeing, and this is what I learned while I was here, and isn’t this so cool, all you people who also share my upbringing and mindset.” And so through Twitter, a lot of people began to follow our story that year, and I think that’s how we got on the radar of National Geographic.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
And then once we were named, that gave me an opportunity to… The first story I wrote for National Geographic was about us. And that was in 2012, and I’m now a contributing editor for the magazine. So it’s been this trajectory of, I think that the common denominator of everything, of any success I’ve had so far… I do television. I do radio. I do magazines online. You name it. And I think the common denominator with all of it is that I talk about the things that I’ve experienced, and I try to bring people with me to the places I’ve been.
Bryan Wish:
That’s so great. I mean, you’re pulling me into the conversation just talking. I imagine the writing is very evocative where the audience feels [inaudible 00:41:31].
Heather Greenwood Davis:
I hope so. I hope so.
Bryan Wish:
So it’s so acute, and the way you’ve used language with your voice, I feel intimately there traveling alongside you. I felt like I was on the street corner in China [inaudible 00:41:46].
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Were you scared, too?
Bryan Wish:
No. No. I wasn’t scared, but probably because I’m always asking for directions from strangers, even in America, so that tells you anything. But I did. I was even visualizing in Portugal, sitting down at a cafe, and I also envisioned going to a siesta and sleeping and then coming back and the table still being there. So my imagination took me, but you opened the corridor for it to go in different ways.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
That’s great. That’s what I strive to do, because I think it can change people. One of the things that, when we first decided to do this trip, and yes, we made the decision for ourselves personally, and yes, we made it for me professionally, but I very quickly realized… I don’t know if I would say I was consumed with guilt, but I felt like this is so unfair. My two kids are going to have this… I knew, right? They’re going to have this incredible experience. And there are so many other kids I wish could have that experience that simply won’t have that opportunity, right, whether it’s a cost factor, or their families aren’t open to the idea in the same way, or the risks or difference or health.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
There’s just so many reasons why kids couldn’t do it. And so it was really important to me, then and now, that families could see themselves in what we were doing and could relate to what we were doing, so that hopefully… And I’ve had this feedback, where parents will bring an article home to their kids or show them something on a video of ours or what have you, not as a, “Look what we did,” but more of like, “Look what’s out there. Look at the possibilities that are out there and that you can aspire to or do when you’re older or try to get to it.” I don’t know. It was always really important.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Well, you seemed to really approach this year with such intentionality. This wasn’t just this aimless jaunt through the world.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
No.
Bryan Wish:
It was an intentional cultivation, and the reward has been tenfold, it sounds like.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
And I think it’s beautiful what you learned about yourselves, how you’re sharing it with others, and just what it’s led to. And that’s why I was so inspired, and [inaudible 00:44:24], but similar paths. And I just think it’s so cool to hear it from your perspective as a mother, a wife, an individual everything that you went through. And I’m just so grateful for you sharing and just so excited for you and what’s to come. And last question for you, and then we’ll tell people where to find you.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
When you look at the next five or 10 years, even though you live, sounds like, very fluidly and organically, what are some of those dreams that you have for yourself and then the people that you want to impact through your work, through your message, and what you stand for as a person?
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah. I mean, it’s so interesting because two things have changed. One was the pandemic. Of course it was tragic for a lot of people, and it was a difficult time for all of us. But the one thing that, if I was going to say there was a silver lining there, was that a lot of families had an opportunity during that time to spend time together, and it’s time that they wouldn’t normally have. And I’m really hopeful that, as frustrating as some of that might have been, I know parents struggled with schooling with their kids and that sort of thing and working from home, that I hope that there are people who saw that as an opportunity to get to know their kids a little better and to maybe, even though they didn’t take them around the world, they got that same sort of intense time. So I’m excited about what we’re going to see from others in terms of as a result of some of that time together.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
As far as for us, we’re at a weird pivot because now I’m about to be an empty nester. One child is already off to university. The other one will leave in September. So I’m excited about this next section of my life when it’s my husband and I again, and you can bet that I will be very difficult to find at home. We will be hitting the road as much as we can when we don’t have kids here to worry about, and kids who can join us when they can. So I’m looking forward to that. And professionally, I would really love to do something… I want to continue in travel. I don’t see retirement in my future. You’ll have to retire me. So I’m hoping that I can continue in travel, and maybe I’ll do a TV show or something so that I can take people with me even more.
Bryan Wish:
Wow. Sounds like the sky… Well, not sounds like. I think the sky is the limit for you [inaudible 00:47:06]-
Heather Greenwood Davis:
100%. Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
… fly the plane where you want it to go, and I’m so excited for you and what’s ahead. And thanks for such an incredible chat. What a beautiful experience and formative informative period, but also one that shaped you for so many years to come.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I enjoyed it.
Bryan Wish:
And last thing. Where can people find you? Twitter.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
All over.
Bryan Wish:
All over.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
On social I’m @by, B-Y, Heather GD, like a byline. And my websites are heathergreenwooddavis.com and globetrottingmama.com.
Bryan Wish:
Love it. Well, thank you.
Heather Greenwood Davis:
Thank you.