When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put

by Vivian Swift

Following a lifetime of trekking across the globe, Vivian Swift, a freelance designer who racked up 23 temporary addresses in 20 years, finally dropped her well-worn futon mattress and rucksack in a small town on the edge of the Long Island Sound. She spent the next decade quietly taking stock of her life, her immediate surroundings, and, finally, what it means to call a place a home.
The result is When Wanderers Cease to Roam. Filled with watercolors of beautiful local landscapes, seasonal activities, and small, overlooked pleasures of easy living, each chapter chronicles the perks of remaining at home, including recipes, hobbies, and prized possessions of the small town lifestyle. At once gorgeously rendered and wholly original, this delightful and masterfully observed year of staying put conjures everything from youthful yearnings and romantic travels to lumpy, homemade sweaters and the gradations of March mud.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir, Art, Biography Memoir, Biography, Graphic Novels

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 2008

About the author

www.vivianswiftblog.com

All my books go very well with a glass of wine, but my blog can be paired with a cup of tea as well as a flute of champagne. Join us every Friday for a watercolor lesson, some behind-the-scenes tales about the publishing business, maybe a voyage to someplace far away, and definitely some crankiness about the way of the world.

I would make a great Boss of Everybody because I have the right job experience: I've been a Faberge expert for Christie's auction house in New York; a hotel maid in Reno (Nevada); the Bio-terrorism Administrator for the Tea Association of the USA; a book store clerk (in a mall!); a receptionist for a Manhattan hedge fund; a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa; a junior administrator at Cartier; an au pair in Paris; etc. I have never taken a writing class or a single painting lesson.

Just goes to show you that if you speak fluent French and have an extremely very low tolerance for boredom, you are guaranteed a wonderfully meandering career path.

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the books from my TBR=explode project for June - I loved this year-long meditation on staying put, through memories and watercolor, drawings and observation. It is similar to Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but with art, and of course with a different person's perspective. I loved how she incorporated her past travels and collections of objects into the months, and the profiles of months by mood/feel/color gave me a true sense of Long Island without experiencing it myself.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book to be savored. Grab a cup of vanilla tea in a beautiful tea cup, of course and enjoy a journey through the seasons. Be completely immersed in the beautiful watercolors (I wish I could do that!), the poetry, diary entries, and short stories. It felt like spending an afternoon with a good friend. So glad I found this book and now looking forward to reading her other work.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

My friend Bonny recommended this book to me, so I hesitate to review it negatively, but I think she'll forgive me! As we're both avid collectors of travel journals and sketchbooks, I can see why she thought I'd like it. The concept is great but the execution left, for me, a lot to be desired. The format, loosely, owes too much to Sarah Midda's brilliant 'South of France, a Sketchbook,' with its calendar-based organizing principle and its vignette-based illustration style. I say 'loosely' because Swift ignores what makes Midda's book so successful (other than the high quality of her illustrations) and that is its breathtaking pithiness. Midda gets a whole world in her tiny, jewel-like sketches and her lists and her timelines.
Midda's book has spawned zillions of imitators, Swift being the most recent. (To cite one example: her full-page illustration of Wellington boots introducing the April chapter is an egregious ripoff of Midda's May espadrille page.) Unfortunately, in every case, Midda's imitators fall far short of the mark. Swift's book is too much----too much text, too many illustrations, for the kind of book it aspires to be. A good editor would have been a godsend. And then there's the quality of the illustrations themselves. Some of them are quite nice, but many are badly drawn and badly painted. Swift needs to spend much more time honing her craft.
And finally, I found the basic premise of the book , a journal of 'staying put' a bit annoying. Since she never gives us a real rationale for a non-travel travel journal, I began to wonder if she were just trying to fit the square peg of her clunky memoir into the round hole of this popular genre.
So there. I feel grinchy, but I'll get over it. (Bonny, are you still speaking to me?) If, by the way, you haven't read and feasted on Sara Midda's 'South of France, a Sketchbook,' please put a copy in your very own hands. It's the real deal.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purposely read this book slowly. Full of beautiful watercolor illustrations (That oddly enough make me think that if I just dug out some watercolors, I could paint like that too. Which is far from the truth, but still I like art that makes you think you can create things just as beautiful) and episodic journal entries that follow a year of village life along the Long Island Sound, this book was inspiring. For much of her life Swift moved from city to city and country to country, but for 10 years (the time span in which the book was written) she stayed put and her journal reflects both that life of travel and her interest in setting down roots.
This was a Christmas gift from my Dad and I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy, or at least sneaking in to your favorite library/bookstore and looking at all the great pictures.

[Lindsay_Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. I love the idea of being able to write a travel memoir about your own home. Swift mixes in stories and memories from her wide range of travels as well, but the majority of the book is about seeing the place she has decided to stay put with the same kind of wonder and appreciation she has felt for more exotic places. She does this by being very observant, writing about and drawing what she sees for a year in her hometown. Being a homebody myself I could relate to this, and it encouraged me to enjoy my own day-to-day life that way as well.

I'm glad I bought a copy because I think I will enjoy revisiting this as the seasons change. The chapter about January was the most resonate part for me this reading.

[Mycala · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second reading of this book, and it's a feast for the eyes on a day like this when I've been stuck in bed for the fifth day, delirious from lack of sleep due to coughing and fever and an ever-urgent need to blow my nose just as I'm about to drift off. I'm in the worst mood -- I just want to get back to being among the living again -- and this book was a lovely distraction. I love her representations of ephemera, the stories of her travels, the tiny glimpses into the landscape of her neighborhood, and her cat stories.

(First time read: December 21, 2012) LOVE this book -- from the "how to use this book" humor at the beginning to the little sketches, the stories of her travels, the paintings, her sense of humor... this is a book that is not only interesting to read, but also very inspiring.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW! What a cool book this is and what a great pick-me-up it was on a gray November Monday when I peered into my work mailbox and saw a padded envelope containing a hardcover book. It's about the size of a cookbook but it's just a really amazing reflection on one year in the life of the writer while she reflects on previous journeys and relationships. This is a book that I did not want to put down and I carefully read as much as I could during my lunch hour that day and continued with it at home that night. It really transported me to this little village on Long Island Sound or Ireland or anywhere the author went because of her beautiful watercolor illustrations. Just amazing and it's days like Monday when I REALLY love my job because of the free books I get!

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was attracted to the book by the title but enchanted by the watercolors that fill the pages. A kind of illustrated diary. There are not entries for each day but frequently themes for each month. Some of my favorite parts of this book were just ideas. For example to draw one tree each day of the winter. Might try that. I also loved the little sketches of snowmen in poses I would never think of like diving (only the butt shows) or synchronized swimming, sketches of crows playing in a sprinkler. At the end I wasn't really sure of what travelers do when they stop traveling but if more people could enjoy the small things in life the way Vivian Swift does the world would be a nicer place.

[Melissa Jeanette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quirky, at times poetic, inspiring to the artist and journal keeper in me; a lovely meditation on and observations of all the little things that make life interesting. I bought a copy for my personal book collection after checking it out from the library.

[Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely and delightful book. Ideas for my own journal habit and good reminders to be slow and look around. ❤️

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love books that are a combination of sketchbook and journal. This one was a lot heavier on the journaling than many others I’ve read, and there was more text about the author’s travels than I had anticipated for a journal about staying put. Nevertheless, I appreciated many things about this book including: the organization by months, the page designs, many of the watercolour illustrations, and the inclusion of charming entries from a Long Island newspaper.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the creativity in this journal. Enjoyed the adventure of staying put.

[Tulitha King · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book, a gentle ode to staying put and appreciating the world around you.

[Marisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really excited to read "When Wanderers Cease to Roam" - I had read some good reviews and also liked the concept. I liked the idea of a "memoir" type of writing about someone who had always wanted to be moving and had chosen to stay-put - someone who was basically enjoying where they were fully, while looking back at the great adventures of their life. Also, I liked the idea of mixing mediums (journal-style writings with watercolor paintings).

However, Swift didn't live up to my expectations. The book ended up being a bit campy with quotations and phrases all over the pages that reminded me of sentences that would be engraved into wood and sold in a interior decoration store for vacation stores. It came out a bit trite and not as revealing/honest as I hoped. That said, I did read the entire book so Swift did do a good job of holding my attention with the drawings and easy reading style to get me through. She made it easy to relate to her life of enjoying the beautiful place you may have found yourself, but not easy enough to get over the lack of real insight.

Teton County Library Call No: NEW 808.80355 SWIFT V

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comfy but a little depressing. Vivian Swift's cozy vignettes and peaceful paintings made me want to curl up with a cup of tea and snuggle with kittens and imagine myself as an adventurous, independent woman. But I couldn't brush aside the subtle reminders of loneliness underneath all her memories. This book found a perfect niche in my life as I read it during the time I was getting married and, a bit reluctantly, closing the chapter of my traveling days. Through reading her journal entries, I realized I'd rather sacrifice the thrill of traveling for the comfort of companionship. I think she never was able to come to the same conclusion.

[Juli Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Illustrated-journal-style books will always be popular, and I'm sure this is no exception. It is, however, not the best example of the genre. The illustrations are fine and the concepts is interesting (world traveller "stays put" in New England village for a whole year), but I found the text to be trite and self-indulgent, for the most part. Swift is sometimes relatable (her illustrations of her cats and their antics, for example, are spot-on), but often her reminiscences about her travels left a bad taste in my mouth.

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned about this book from an NPR list of Nancy Pearl's 2009 "Under the Radar Books." The sub title is "A Travelers Journal of Staying Put." I loved the non-linear journal format, with it's delightful watercolor vignettes. Swift was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger, Afica and has travelled extensively; as a former Peace Corps volunteer and traveler, she has inspired me to start a journal of my experiences and has given me permission to not worry about the order.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this genuinely charming, except the part where she grumps about modern travel. Sorry we're not all old enough to have traveled in the halcyon days of pre-social media. Anyway, I did enjoy the calendar organization and the simple drawings, lists and quotes. Made me want to travel through France and, yes, Long Island Sound. Though another review says it's a rip-off of "South of France: A Sketchbook," so now I have to read that to compare.

[Joanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

She doesn't say why she stopped travelling or what she's doing now. Does she work? What happened with all those husbands and fiances randomly mentioned? According to this book she spends her days illustrating and making notes about the weather, her travel memories, her teacups and her clothes. This lacked substance for me and I couldn't connect with the author.

[Ceecee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a cosy read. It’s how I would imagine myself doing when I’m older and well-travelled.

I loved all the bits about Ireland because it didn’t feel romanticised to me. Ireland was just a stop to Swift’s destination.

Definitely going to pick up and read again for the moments when I feel so restricted by COVID.

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

It felt like little tidbits here and there thrown together. I guess I went into it hoping to learn more about her travels or why she ceased to roam and how someone that is a wanderer became content not roaming.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have repeatedly read this book, - - ordered copies on Amazon and sent it as gifts. Currently I do not have a copy of my own, so will order it from the library again. I can only say for you to check it out! Her illustrations are exquisite!

[Allie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring and nauseatingly self-indulgent.

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was bummed that this wasn't what I was expected...loved the title. It was just a little too cartoony for me.

[Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's as simple as this: Susan Branch and I are kindred spirits. Vivian Swift and I are not. Vivian's watercolors are lovely, however.

[Gaby Meares · Rating 5 out of 5]

This caught my eye in the bookshop and I couldn't resist it! I'm so glad I succumbed and purchased this delightful book.
There has been an abundance of travel journals published, but this is a celebration of staying in one place. It's about appreciating the place you call home, and looking at it as you would if you were a tourist. Vivian Swift accompanies her observations with delightful watercolours and the entire text is handwritten by her - extraordinary! It made me think of Wainwright's gorgeous handwritten guidebooks.
This is a book to be savoured and poured over and returned to as the seasons change. (Although, being an Australian reader I had to switch the seasons and never have to content with the cold Swift so eloquently describes.) To be enjoyed with a special cup of tea and a cat curled up on your lap.

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was surprisingly good - the watercolors were charming. I especially liked the illustrations of clothing and how the book was structured monthly across a whole year. There are a number of meditations about "staying put," but also a lot of recollections of the author's travels as a young(er) woman, and the shifting between the two allowed it so that it never became boring. Part of what kept me reading was an interest in the author's background working for Sotheby's and a few references to diamond smuggling. We get a little info on that topic but I would have liked more. The tone was sort of wistful or somber, in a "my golden years are behind me" sort of way, but it worked with the overall meditative feel of the book. Pensive.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really lovely book--it feels light and bubbly, but as you turn the pages, there are unexpected depths, moments of beauty and sadness. The book itself is gorgeous, and Swift's description of her past adventures (and how she is managing staying at home) are delightful.

It's not a format I do well with--the little vignettes sprinkled with random lists, a spattering of poetry, frequent gorgeous (and distracting) illustrations--so it likely will not end up having a permanent place on my shelf. But two of my friends are going to be getting it for Christmas this year, because it's just perfect for them.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, and would love to gift it to everyone I've ever travelled with.

It is such a warm hug of a book, filled with nudges to see the wonder in the world, even within a well-travelled acre of land. The seasonal approach makes me want to go back to this book again and again and again.

When the days are grey and I'm feeling listless and like my life no longer holds the magic - and the ability to see and revere - that travel can so easily bring, I'll fold myself into this book and remind myself: it is truly all around us. We just have to open our heart, eyes and minds to it.

[Tami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. I follow Vivian's blog because I am new to painting and enjoy her painting tips. I bought this book mainly to see her work. It covers a year month by month, highlighting the joys of every month. I originally was reading only about the current month but then when I cleaned for company the book got lost for several months!!! (Like under the sofa as company was coming and then didn't remember where I put it. That's why it took so long to read!!). Finally just sat down and read it. Delightful book. I'm glad I own it so I can reference her painting any time I want.