Welcome to Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel’s WAR & PEACE issue. This collection, months in the making, deeply explores the themes of war and peace, with a special emphasis on travel storytelling that combines current events throughout the world with reflections on the past. The word war comes from the late Old English wurre, meaning a large-scale military conflict, the French guerre meaning dispute, and the German verwirren, meaning to bring into confusion. The word peace was first used in the 12th century to define the right of freedom from civil disorder, and it comes from the French pais, meaning reconciliation, silence, permission, and the Latin pacem/pax meaning freedom from war or conflict. These works explore all kinds of war, from military battles to drug wars to enforced participation in violence—and many layers of peace-seeking, from a culture’s recovery after devastation, to making peace with oneself as one observes a world seemingly on fire.
...Scene: Chino, a town of subdivisions and cattle pens—without traffic, less than an hour away from Los Angeles. At 8am, a pungent manure scent hangs in the hot summer air. The car windows are up, but I can’t escape the stench of cattle dairies coming through the vents. The prison complex is on the outskirts of town, just beyond a lush emerald field. Tendrils of mist lift like smoke from tall dew-bright grasses. A red-tailed hawk swoops down from on high, disappears into green, and emerges triumphant, a mouse in its talons.
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