Welcome to The Itinérance

Well, today, it’s little more than a brand new Substack with this single post. But soon, it will be a place for me to write the kinds of travel stories that we don’t see too much of these days (more on that in a minute). It will be a place to post some of the photos I take on my travels or the photos some of the insanely talented professional photographers I get to work with take of me on my travels (with their permission, of course). It will be a place for me to ask some of my favorite travel writers and some of my globetrotting friends one simple question: tell me about the best day you ever had while traveling.

It won’t be a place for service stories because we have plenty of those in the world right now (more on that in a minute) but it will be a place for me to talk about some of my favorite travel books, stories, and maybe even some travel shows.

Someday, I’d love it if it were a place where I could pay other writers to contribute their own essays. But maybe not. Itinérance, not knowing our destination and all.

(TL;DR Version)

I’m a North Carolina-based travel writer who has contributed to National Geographic, BBC Travel, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Ski Magazine, Outside, Adventure.com, and the Toronto Star’s travel section.

To those of you reading this who’ve pitched and written stories before, you know this question intimately. It’s one that almost every editor will ask you almost every time you pitch them (if it’s not already included in your pitch, which it probably should be).

“Why are we telling this story now?”

Because, while travel writing is fun and fruitful and probably the greatest gig I’ve ever had (seriously: I get paid to go have adventures and then write about them), it seems that the ecosystem has shied away from the kinds of literary travel writing that made me dream of roaming the world when I was a kid; back when I felt stuck in my little clamming town on the Jersey Shore, reading Pico Iyer and Martha Gellhorn and Paul Theroux and Susan Orleans and William Least Heat-Moon, dreaming about the day when I could start exploring the world. In their place, a world full of service-based stories that provide information more than they do inspiration.

But don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a rant. Service stories are good. The world needs service stories. After all, much of the purpose of travel writing is to help people better plan and execute their own adventures. And, if we’re being honest, the literary prose of the travel writing of the past probably garners a lot less clicks than actionable service stories. Like it or not, it’s the clicks that get us paid. It’s the almighty clicks that allow us to make a living. So I don’t bemoan publications for publishing what people want to read. But I have little interest in telling you about the five best places to see in Rome or that one travel item you absolutely have to pack. At least, not if I’m not getting paid to tell you about those things.

What I do have a greater interest in is writing stories that fulfill me, that help me make sense of the world, and that scratch the unscratchable itch I’ve always had to tell good stories.

No. In fact, unless I’m in a big city, roaming around makes me super nervous. Which is why I almost always have destinations when I travel and when I write, both in the literal and the metaphoric sense. That is, more often than not, I go to a place for the purposes of writing about that place; the location is the destination but so is the story. I’m also the kind of writer who tends to write my endings first. Or, if not write them, to at least ideate them. Because, to me, every story is like a road trip: you probably shouldn’t set off if you don’t know where you’re going, while always leaving time and space for detours, explorations, adventures.

Locations and endings. Destinations both.

So, in that sense, maybe The Itinérance is a bad name for this newsletter. Because I’m not roaming. I am going to a specific place. But fuck it. It sounds cool (because French). Or maybe it’s the perfect name because I don’t always know the precise destination of where this is new thing is headed. I only know that I want a place to write the kinds of travel stories that I want to write, regardless of what kinds of travel stories are selling right now.

(It’ll also be a place to share the travel stories I do write for traditional and legacy publications.)

Who knows. Probably not. But does the world need more of anything right now, other than peace, love, and understanding? Also probably not.

(long version)

My name is Michael Ventuolo-Mantovani (Mike V for very, very short) and I am a Chapel Hill-based freelance journalist who covers all sorts of culture, from trees to NASCAR, animation to mortality, military affairs to the arts. But most of all, I write about travel and bicycles (sometimes in the same story). Recently, I have traveled to Norway, North Dakota, Iceland, Italy, France, all over North Carolina, and Lithuania to report stories. In fact, I’m writing this note from Minneapolis, where I plan to turn this family trip into a story or two that I can sell.

Outside the bounds of travel, my byline has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, WIRED, The Guardian, The New Republic, Scientific American, Catapult, The Bitter Southerner, the Observer, Disney.com, and a ton of others, including most of the English-speaking-world’s major bicycling sites and magazines.

And until very recently, I wrote a Substack called Being a Dad is Hard as Fuck.

But before I got into any of this writing business, I was a guy who spent years and years doing my best to sate my lifelong wanderlust by touring around the country in the back of any number of rock-and-roll vans. I’ve crisscrossed America a few dozen times, visiting all forty-eight contiguous states multiple times, and have seen the U.S. mile by mile, coursing through the “flyover states” (a term I loathe) time and time and time again. You might argue that playing music was my first stab at trying to get someone to pay me to go have adventures. Of course, the “pay me” part is never much of a guarantee when you’re playing rock and roll.

You can check out some of my work at www.therealmichaelvm.com

Well, in French, it’s “ee-tin-eh-runce.” But, being from New Jersey, I’ll probably just say it like “itinerary” with a different ending. I certainly wouldn’t want to sound like an asshole.

Thanks for being here.

• mike v

  Minneapolis, Minnesota (for another week. Then the Dolomites for work, then home in Chapel Hill, then a few weeks in the mountains, then a week in Brooklyn. See what I mean about that wanderlust?)