S5, E35: Following the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail—and the Story It Left Out

Welcome to Unpacked Five Questions, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of one great travel story. In this episode, executive editor Katherine LaGrave sits down with writer Latria Graham, Afar’s Unpacked columnist.

Latria spent seven weeks driving the nearly 5,000-mile Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail—alone—to report a story about the Corps of Discovery’s most essential and least credited member: York, an enslaved man whose skills, knowledge, and presence helped make the entire expedition possible.

Latria traces the trail from Kentucky to the Pacific Northwest, stopping at massacre sites, Indigenous mounds, sunflower fields, and a 50-foot statue of an Indigenous woman with a star quilt—asking what it means to travel responsibly through landscapes layered with historical trauma, and the questions that still remain about York’s life.

Transcript

Katherine: Welcome to Unpacked Five Questions, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of one great travel story. I’m Katherine LaGrave, executive editor at Afar. I’ve loved magazines since I was a kid, and not just the stories in the magazine, the stories about how those stories got made, too. Now, decades later, that’s the purpose of this whole podcast, speaking with writers and photographers who have an ear for incredible travel experiences about how their print stories came to life.

Latria Graham is one of those people, as Afar’s Unpacked columnists since 2022. Latria turns over some of the biggest questions in travel, including whether or not we should visit museums with complicated histories and how we can better support hospitality staff. But when she told me she was planning on spending last summer following the nearly 5,000-mile with her car, I knew that it was a story I wanted to see in our magazine.

I sat down with Latria to chat about what it means to travel responsibly through landscapes that are layered with historical trauma. She also shared the moments of unexpected beauty on the trail, and we spoke about the legacy of York, the enslaved man who made much of the Lewis and Clark expedition possible.

Latria, it’s nice to see you again. We just spoke yesterday and we’re back today.

Latria: We are. It’s always a pleasure to get to talk to you. So I’m happy.

Katherine: So we’re talking about your feature for, um, our spring issue. And you spent 7 weeks and nearly 5,000 miles on the road. And how did this idea to travel all of the trail come about?

Latria: I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve been thinking about black people in travel probably my entire life. My dad was obsessed with Westerns and this idea of going west and travel, and those are the first images I think, that I have of like people moving sort of in some ways the problematic narrative with Westerns in that way. But thinking about like, who gets to go where and how they get there and what they’re hoping for. Um, you know, it’s always sort of been in my mind.

My father was a traveling man and I was too. I love, I spent most of my childhood in the car because he used to open stores for Walmart. And so, you know, that took us all over the American South. But we always came home to South Carolina, where both of my parents are from. So I spent much of my time peeking out the back window of a gray Mitsubishi sort of as a kid. But as I got older and got to traveling on my own, learning more about history and like, who was here? And, you know, all the little factoids that I didn’t know, I really spent some time thinking deeply about who was championed when it came to American history, and who got to leave their mark on the landscape and then who didn’t, who was erased or omitted and why. And that sort of has led me to my most recent line of work, sort of as a travel writer and a history writer, thinking deeply about some of these American stories. Right. Particularly American stories. But I do some international work.

So, you know, when I started traveling on my own as an adult, one of the first posts I was sent to as an academic was Missoula, Montana. And I was like, man, I’ve seen 8 black people in 6 months. Surely we’re not the first black people to be here. Who is here first? Um, you know, and so I went searching and I found folks like Mary Fields, who was the first black woman to get a Gold Star postal route in the late 19th century, and sort of learning about her and learning about all of these trails. And so from there, it sort of spread. I had some sense of black history in the South, but I didn’t have a great sense of black history across America. Right. And so not long after Mary Fields, I learned about York. So this is 2021. We always hear about Lewis and Clark, which is actually like not the name of this expedition. It was called the Corps of Discovery. And so learning about the Corps of Discovery and all of the people that went and then learning that there was a black man named York who ended up doing this entire trail, who was not well known at the time. We’ve talked about him a little bit more in recent years, and Sacagawea, who also did this trip, learning about them, learning about this trip, thinking about the fact that America’s 250th was coming up.

I felt that this was a trip I could do because I had crisscrossed the country a number of times. The closer we got to the 250th, the way people were talking about America, I felt like it was an important trip to do, to see what was still there, and also try to figure out how to make peace with my country, right. And how to reconnect with both the history that’s there, the landscape, the current people, the land and the plants and the animals on it. So I’ll stop there because I talk too much.

Katherine: No. I love what resulted from all of this thought, which is this story. And you and I have spoken about it as in many ways, the beginning of a story. And I have a question later on that that I want to, um, come back to that gets that kind of this journey being the beginning of, of many. But why is York so important to the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Corps of Discovery? Why is he so important?

Latria: Yeah. So in reading over many of the documents and talking to living historians that know both this terrain, this history and the indigenous peoples that this corps encountered whenever they crossed this land. Many people say that this expedition would not have been possible without York. In terms of him being able to hunt, in terms of his medicinal and foraging know how in a lot of these places. He also is one of the first black men that indigenous people would have encountered. Held some mystery and curiosity for them. I think is the best way to say it. You know, in this idea that for certain indigenous people, having this dark skin held some power, right?

So there’s a moment in the journals where a group of less than hospitable indigenous people is getting ready to kill the Corps of Discovery, right? And then they see this sort of black man, you know, walking. And in this particular tribe, they see him and they realize that they are in their minds or in their beliefs with someone of great power, and they decide to talk to them instead of outright just kill them from first sight, right? Because this idea, even in this moment that like white men crossing territory that they don’t necessarily have permission to be in, they’re coming to colonize, they’re coming to take something or someone, right? And the idea of already defending place because the Corps of Discovery, they came with these coins, you know, with Jefferson, you know, his face on them basically, and was like, you are now part of our territories, right? We’ve bought this land, no big deal. You now, you know, sort of answer to us basically. And like, as a person who’s been living in this place for thousands of years, who wants to deal with that foolishness, right? And so thinking sort of about that idea, that concept of power, discovery, colonization, what indigenous people knew were coming and how they were stopping some of that. And York sort of gave them a buffer in some ways and, you know, kept them kept this this core alive. He’s mentioned several times in the journals for doing things like that.

Katherine: And this never actually came up in the story. And I don’t think you and I have talked about it. So, you know, only answer this if you’re comfortable, but how did it feel to read and do this research and discover that the association with York was one of great power and that it helped make this expedition possible?

Latria: There’s a bit of a split in the understanding of York’s role. I would say until maybe the last 10 years, 15 years has been severely minimized. Right? So we’re thinking about the perspective of the historians that are taking these first person lenses, right? You know what’s written in these diaries, right? And how people are talked about and they’re taking the word as gospel, right? Sort of in this way, the things that the men on this trip who could write. York could not write. So we don’t have anything from his perspective or his voice. But these men writing these particular documents had certain beliefs that shaped what they wrote. And now we’re able to go back and investigate those and say, what are their motivations and why are, you know, what were their beliefs that are undergirding the ways that they’re talking about these things?

And so the first couple of encounters, I purchased everything I could find on the Lewis and Clark expedition. And even as I traveled across the country, like I would find things like a collection of weather records. And I was like, oh, I don’t have that one. I need to buy this thing. So it’s one of those things that I can confidently say that I’ve, I basically own or have read or have touched in many ways, just about everything that’s out there. And, you know, in some of these interpretation, historical interpretations, particularly before nineteen fifty. He comes off as a buffoon. He comes off as an idiot, you know. And William Clark, you know, there’s a series of letters about how York died at the end. He was like, yeah, you know, I gave him his freedom and he didn’t do well with it. And he died. And that’s what he deserved, basically, is what that letter says. Right. And then we get these other interpretations of this letter and like, why he says what he says, what’s at stake. Right. Like bringing all of these forces that are pushing down on a body or social expectations that are pushing down on a body and figuring out why they’re saying what they’re saying, what the motivations are behind that.

That’s something that we’re doing in modernity. But people were not necessarily doing in the thirties, forties and fifties when people start writing about York. And so I encountered a lot of racism in these early pieces. And then you start getting black historians that set things in context. Right. That show he’s not just an enslaved man. He’s a skilled, enslaved man. Right? He’s allowed to carry a gun, you know, as they’re going west, right? So in some ways, there’s a level of trust and skill and protection that’s happening kind of in these places. So it. It broke my heart because it confirmed so much of what I knew to be true about the American historical record. And I say this as a black woman from South Carolina, which is the deep American South. And like the ways that my own family’s stories had been stories and lived experiences and oral histories were sort of relegated to the margins. Right. When it comes to the idea of data or, you know, historical accuracy and academic investigation, right? We’re always privileging the text. We’re always privileging the thing that is written instead of, you know, the way people lived or what’s been passed down, right? If we don’t have a way to to document it again. It’s changed a little bit more with technology, but that’s something that’s happened the last 10, 20 years. We’re starting to see that and really investigate that and provide historical context to black life in a way that’s important. Right. So Saidiya Hartman was one of the first people to do critical Fabulation. Dr. Tiya Miles is doing it in some particularly miraculous ways. So like, I am in the legacy of a thing that is happening. That’s really it started many, many years ago, but is really gaining. And I’m putting this in quotes, academic validity probably in the last 20 years.

Katherine: Mhm. And did you encounter any sites that felt like they meaningfully corrected the historical record or attempted to?

Latria: There were a couple. Not all of them made it into this piece. Right? Because, you know, like 5,000 miles is 2,500 words is just like not enough. So there were a couple of moments. One is the like statue of Ed Hamilton in Louisville, which is where I began this story. I don’t start it. Most people start this trail in Saint Louis, but because William Clark and York, his enslaved man, were in Kentucky. Right. And that’s sort of really where the Clark’s, you know, as surveyors, as explorers were set up. That is the place where they truly leave from. And that is the place that York returns to, right. Whenever this expedition is done. And I felt like it was important to be on that ground and in that place for a little bit, you know, and there’s this large statue overlooking the water that was very hard to find because I didn’t know exactly how to get there or what to look for, that it felt important to see because there are very few markers.

We don’t know what York looked like, right? Everything that we get is a symbol of him and not like an execution of a man. But this feels like one of the closest when I think about sort of this place. So thinking about that, seeing him as real. He has a gun in his hand. He’s holding ducks that he has hunted. Right? So like this idea of image, of power and skill was really important for me to see. And then there was another piece near Chamberlain, South Dakota, that is of an indigenous woman with a star quilt. And that was another one. I had just left the Lakota Museum, and I was thinking about all of the territories that I traveled through, all of the sacred sites that were important to indigenous people that are now paved over. You know, in some ways, all of the harm that has happened to people, not just black people and indigenous people, but to anyone relegated to the margins in America. And like how much hurt land can hold. Like when you’re crossing it, right? When you can really see it this way because this country is vast. And, you know, it’s one of those things that like, Yet this time I traveled in my car. But I’ve done it by plane, by train, by Greyhound bus multiple times. But like really slowing down and seeing it and having to make choices and realizing like I am doing in 7 weeks what it took them 2 years to do. Right. And then thinking about, I know the place that I’m from and what it’s like to be in and out of it my entire life, thinking about indigenous people traveling, you know, to their seasonal lands and what it’s like for them to have been in and out of these places for generations, and then they’re not theirs anymore, right? So trying to figure out how to hold all of the good things that I think I’ve experienced in this country, but all of the bad things that I’ve also experienced in this country, and then pulling that apart and thinking about this duality from multiple groups of people. Right? And so there was something when it came to the Dignity: of Earth and Sky Statue. The scale of it was like, wondrous and overwhelming.

Katherine: It’s 50 feet tall, right?

Latria: Yeah. To me, it’s huge. Right? Like, you think the York statue is much smaller? I don’t know the dimensions right off the top of my head, but like this idea that, like, you can stand in the shadow of this woman, right? There’s there’s something about that. And I mean, she is visible from miles away in this area. And just like big enough that the like, blue panels on her star quilt, when the light comes through them, you know, just sort of it’s blanketing your face, right? Like this idea of, you know, people always sort of talk about the wonders of the world and Colossus and how big these things were. And this is one of those things that like this feels appropriate for the landscape, but it’s still too small for the loss, right? Of everything that has happened. And so like sitting there and that’s something that I often do in places, I sit there for like an hour and I just kind of open my ears and I listen both to the people that are around. But I sort of listened to a lot of the sounds that repeat themselves when I’m in a place. It’s a listening exercise that I got from Gordon Hempton, who is the guy that talked about like one square inch of silence, you know, and sort of this idea of like the natural world and what we are missing as the world changes. But like, I really sit and think deeply and just kind of listen and try to get a feel for a rhythm of a place. And that’s one of the spaces I did it in.

Another one that I found interesting that didn’t make it into the story is the Spirit Mound historical site, which again, large indigenous mounds still there. One of the few kind of landmarks that is still there. A lot of the. And this is due to climate change. Lakes that were there when Lewis and Clark passed through. Those have dried up. Or the river moves because we’ve dammed it and moved it around and done all of these things. So a lot of spaces that I found really poignant, really fraught, really interesting. There’s no great marker for them in some ways, the confluences and things like that. But the Spirit Mound was another one that was still there during that time, that it was just, what is it like to watch this large mound just rise out of the landscape?

Another one that there is no marker for, and then I’ll wind this up is and I write about it in North Dakota, this idea that there is no marker for the stars, but it is one of the few things that connected. When I was there at Fort Abraham State Park and I go to the star party, right? There’s a marker for the history that happened there. Custer was stationed there, and all of the bloody, bloody history that comes with him and with that, particularly on Mandan Village land. But you know, this idea that like, I am there and I look up and the stars that I’m seeing are the stars that York would have seen 225 years ago. Right? They’re a little bit different, but they’re there. They’re close. And, you know, there’s nothing between me and those like that idea of being able to directly track that without interference, without light pollution, because North Dakota is beautiful but sparsely populated in that way.

Katherine: Yeah. That’s right. You’re talking to a North Dakotan.

Latria: Yeah, I know, I know I and I’ve told you like, I mean, there is no great statue to sunflowers, but there should be because that was one of those jaw dropping moments. And I just could not stop looking at it. And it’s going to sound a little off kilter for me, but I was like, I need to go back to North Dakota. I was charmed by it.

Katherine: It’s a good example of some moments of beauty, which you and I had spoken about how to balance them. Right. And I think that sunflower moment of feeling the presence of the land, um, and that companionship of nature as you moved through it, I thought it was a really beautiful moment.

Latria: Yeah. Thank you. I mean, there was, that was something that I thought a lot about with this, because I don’t know that you and I have talked about this specifically, but like doing a trip this long in terms of time, but also in terms of length by myself was in its own way, really lonely, right? Like I was sitting thinking about a lot of history, a lot of facts, a lot of ghosts, you know, because there are a couple of massacre sites along this trail. And so this idea of, you know, York is the only person like him on this trail and everyone but one man basically believed in the institution of slavery, and the one man that didn’t believe in the institution of slavery dies by the time they get to Iowa. He’s the only death that’s on you. York is traveling with men that believe in the institution of slavery and believe in him being enslaved. And he is set apart. Right? And so what is it like to be in these landscapes and set apart in my own way, and then see something miraculous? You remember from home.

This moment where I’m traveling and I see a bit of coneflower, and the pink is so visibly recognizable, even though I’m thousands of miles away from where I’m from. And so like, what would that have been like for York? Were there things that were recognizable or familiar to him that reminded him of people that he had to leave back East? You know, he had a wife. He had a son. He had no choice in terms of whether or not he was going. Most of the men that go on this expedition are not because they expect them to die. They don’t expect them to come back. Right. So this idea of like, what is it like to know that there are people that you miss and that miss you and that you also can’t share this experience with, but also know that you maybe if you do things right, get to share it when you get back. And so that’s something that maybe York and that I had, because I didn’t use social media, I was very intentional of not being like, look where I’m at, y’all. I took lots of videos and photographs and all of that stuff. But it’s also like, are there ways to really describe the transformative nature of this trip? I think I tried. I also don’t know if I answered your question. I’m sorry.

Katherine: That’s a conversation. That’s what this is. You know, you write the Unpacked column for us here at Afar, where you turn over, think about address some of travel’s biggest questions, and one that I thought of when I was reading your story was getting your perspective on what it means to travel responsibly. I’ll use this in air quotes, travel responsibly through landscapes that are layered with such historical trauma.

Latria: Mhm. Oh, that’s a good question. And I think, I hope I tried to model that, like whenever I did this story, like, I, I, because I thought very deeply and, you know, you and I went back and forth a couple of times because I was like, okay, here’s the short, short, short version of this trip. If I have to do it on the edge of winter, and here’s the longer one when I have more time, right?

So, you know, thinking responsibly about a place for this one, there are a couple of dynamics to it. I think, you know, in terms of where I spent my money trying to do that with mostly local restaurants, right? Even if it was a bet, right? Like spending money with locals, particularly the further west I got, it felt like the easier that was in some ways because there are these small towns don’t necessarily even have a McDonald’s in them right when I’m passing through them. But also, it made it harder and easier in the sense that like, I could just get some McDonald’s and go to bed. I know I’ve got to be up in 6 hours, you know, or whatever. Like I can make the choice to do the quick thing or the interesting thing. And I tried very hard most of the time to spend money with locals and do the interesting thing. You know me, I love a good farmer’s market. I love a good pick up a sandwich and go to a park and see how other people are experiencing this world or this place. And there was a moment where I do that at a bend in a river. I just go get a sandwich, and it’s a park on an indigenous reservation that I could access, and it’s got this big horseshoe bend in the river, and I just sit there and I’m like, okay, you know what is in this community? How do people recreate, right? How are people thinking about this land in this space?

Whenever it came to camping versus hotels? Right. So if I’m spending the night outside making sure that I’m not littering, that I am practicing all of the good environmental stewardship things that I know how. Right. Making smart choices when I’m places without cell service to practice, leave no trace principles. Some of it’s like the things that we know to do that are responsible, that are kind of ingrained in me. Making choices where I don’t have to use my like safety beacon for, you know, search and rescue to come get me because there are a couple of moments where it’s like, wow, I’d really like to do this thing or this hike or this adventure. And like not knowing where I am in the sense of like, you know, the weather can change very, very quickly. I learned this in North Dakota when it got down into the 30s in August. And I was like, oh, if I decided to do some activity, it’s like, wow, this could have been reckless and I could be very underprepared. So, you know, it’s a mixture of all of those things. But it’s also like the moment we talked about beauty, I’m rolling it back a little bit. Like those small history museums are some of my favorite, again, like local history and understanding those dynamics and those forces.

Katherine: Yeah. You’re intentional. That’s the other part of responsible is you’re being intentional about places that you’re seeking out for stories and history.

Latria: Absolutely. And those were the best. Again, I could like come up with a forty page recommendation of like all the things that did not make this article, but like just an example, a small example that’s an aside is the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, which is on the Johnson County Community College campus and like Overland Park, Kansas. Right? So you’re like, what? Where? I don’t understand what’s happening here, but I they had a Vanessa German piece, and she is one of my favorite artists. And I wanted to see this, you know, but it was one of those things that like, I will go to a community college campus, to an art museum. Like I will go anywhere for good art. Interesting history. And not just the story lauded backed by major donors places, right? Like, what does that look like?

So going in search of those things in the ways that some people are like, I let food plan my trips, I let museums plan my trips. And that also means this is a hard one in terms of time, right? This trip, because I knew it was important to me to go to like the Audubon Museum that’s in like Henderson, Kentucky, because Audubon had some encounters and owned enslaved people, right? So this is another person who is deeply invested in nature. You know, that is one of the major and I’m putting this in quotes, sort of fathers of the way that we think about naturalism in our world, right? And so like, what do they have to say about enslaved people? Right? Because we’re thinking about this again with Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery and like how York might have engaged with the indigenous people he met, knowing that these white men had enslaved his race, his people, and that they had motivations of not necessarily doing the same thing, but thinking about investments. Right. America is very, very new. Thomas Jefferson is like, go catalogues, all of the things that might make us money. So people, you know, minerals and animals you run across lands, you run across like this is go tell, go find what I now own that I can sell is basically what he’s saying here. And York, to some degree understands that. Not to always bring it back to to that, but that’s part of it. And so, you know, when we have these people that we consider to be pillars of history, who’s making their life possible? What are their engagements like with marginalized people? So I’ll stop there.

Katherine: I have 2 more questions. We talked about the sunflowers. I want to hear about a moment of beauty or peace that didn’t make it into the narrative.

Latria: There were so many. And again, I didn’t write about them because in some ways they’re super ordinary. And here’s what I mean. Like this whole trip. Well, most of the trip for the Corps of Discovery followed rivers, right? And so, you know, the confluence or moments where one river flows into another, I just always found really compelling. And so the first time that I call them sort of river changes, but the first time the river changed, I mean, the rivers are it for me, every time that I can crest, you know, a hill or an overlook and see the river or, you know, climb to the top of a bluff and and see the waterways and how they cut across this country was a big one for me. And there’s, you know, not necessarily anything there in terms of like this big, beautiful overlook with amenities or something like that. But, you know, anytime that the river changed or that they flowed together, I tried to stop because this trail is so long because there are so many museums on it, because things open and close at certain hours and all, like all of that stuff made this its own logistical nightmare with lots of anxiety.

The river doesn’t close. It is the thing that made this trip possible, that if I can look for it or get close to it, because that’s its own issue with public private land, right? Highways, because that was a lot of this. I did not spend a whole lot of time on the interstate any time like a good sunset over the river. There were a couple of moments. There was one. It was a winery, and I’ll have to find the name of it and send it to you. But they just had this little a-frame house and it was like in Missouri and it like overlooked. It was just so green. And you could just watch a little bit of the river winding through. Right. And like, that’s how I ended my evening. I didn’t get to end every evening with the river, but like the moments that I could get there, I felt like I knew those moments to be true. For all the things that have been built, all of the stipulations around national parks and getting in at this time, and tourism and the things, it’s like this was the thing that was here before. This is a thing that will be here after. It is a thing that I can always find if I look for it.

Katherine: That is beautiful.

Latria: Oh thank you.

Katherine: You closed the story and you write, Though I’ve made it to the end of the trail, it does not feel like any end. Instead, I have so many more questions. What are some of those questions?

Latria: Oh my God. Um, you know, some of the questions are unanswerable. I think in the micro we don’t we. I will say the historical record doesn’t know exactly what happened to York. Right. We sort of have the he died in 1831. Some folks are like, he left the East and went back to live with indigenous people. And there’s a whole sort of series of lore about that. We have Clark’s letter that was like, yeah, I freed him and he died. All of these. There are multiple possibilities. A number of alternate endings for him. And so there are moments where I want to know what happened to him in the current moment. I am very anxious about what is happening, what will happen to us, right? I have a lot of questions about American nostalgia and how we choose to remember things and how we exist on, you know, in this world.

You and I have talked about this trip for a couple of years, actually, and it’s just like, bam! It worked this year, or it worked in 2025 so that it could come out this year. But this has been on the radar for what, like 3 or 4 years, right? But now we’re bumping up against America’s 250th. And like this idea of like, what is a minor historical mistake? What is a purposeful omission? Can we get those things back? You know, and who do we listen to? Right? So like, I’m thinking about all of that because like, this country is so huge and I did 5,000 miles of it, which is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny bit of it. And what I’m starting to learn is that it feels like there is not an acre of this country that black people haven’t touched. How did they get there? Or to this place? Where are they now? And what happened? And like, what are we? What are we missing?

I’m also thinking about this. I also have a major interest in railroads and Asian American history. That is another sort of facet for another time. But this idea of like following the trails of black explorers. So another story that I did, I’ve traced the Buffalo Soldiers into Alaska and also done that for Black World War II soldiers that built the Alcan Highway. So it’s like everywhere that I thought was remote has some trace of black history, right? Like maybe it’s just a name or it’s just a photo with a date. And I have to like try to work backwards and ask questions and figure out stuff. And it’s not complete, but it’s like, what is this history? And then once I have some sense of it, like, what do I do with it? Or what is the best way to do something with it? I’ve done this track now, and of course, the thing is like, you should do a book. And I was like, books are great. But like, isn’t is it GIS map that people can interact with through an app a better way of like in the moment, getting people to understand like how, how do we get these sources to talk to one another? How do we get these communities to like, talk to one another and highlight and make sure we’re spending our money with local tours, right? Doing these things? What sort of support do they need? And, you know, can I offer this without being or offer services or suggestions to them without being overbearing or controlling or taking over a thing?

Because it’s one thing to be in support of community. It is a different thing to believe you know best for a community. And I never want to do that. And so some of it is like, I just need to tend my backyard and take care of some of the history that is there. I’m doing that. But also, what is the best way in a time of censorship and erasure, to make sure that these stories live and not just as documents, but like as fully realized, multi-dimensional people’s lives. Right. And the choices that they had to make, right. And their motivations, all those pressures that I’ve talked about in this interview, right. Making sure that people understand that and not just a name and a date. That is the question that haunts me, I think, and maybe even just haunts my work as a whole.

Katherine: Mhm. Well, the telling the stories, doing the work, traveling to these places is certainly a start, I think, or a continuation of it. So thank you for letting me pick your brain about the story and chat a little bit more about what you learned. It was fun.

Latria: Yeah. Thank you. It was a great way to sort of end thinking about this section of the work, because you know this as freelancers, we never look back. It’s like we’ve done the job, the check is cleared, the thing is out. Goodbye. On to the next thing. But there were so many people that made this possible and that I was in conversation with in that interview that didn’t make this piece. And it really shows me how being in conversation with them helped shape the way this piece came out.

Katherine: Listener, thank you for tuning in to this episode of Unpacked: Five Questions. In the show notes, you’ll find links to Latria’s story for Afar, as well as to her social media handle. Her Instagram is @MsLatriaGraham.

Join me next month for another episode that takes you behind the scenes with our award winning contributors. I’ll be speaking with writer Ryan Knighton, who visited Japan’s Noto Peninsula a year after the region’s earthquake and found an enduring bounty of food and craft.

Ready for more interviews with travel writers? Visit Afar.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We are at @AfarMedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great travel stories. Subscribing always makes that easy. And be sure to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. It helps other travelers find it.

This has been Unpacked: Five Questions, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene, Nikki Galteland and Katherine LaGrave. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to its other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers podcast.