Meet Jeremiah Gilbert | Travel Writer and Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jeremiah Gilbert and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jeremiah, can you share a quote or affirmation with us?
There’s a famous quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Only thing is, he never said or wrote it. The actual quote comes from Muriel Strode, a poet and writer known in her heyday as “the female Walt Whitman.” Sadly, much about her has disappeared from history. The true quote comes from a 1903 poem of hers: “I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.” I used this as the epitaph to my second book, From Tibet to Egypt: Early Travels After a Late Start, as the quote has always resonated with me. I also wanted to see it receive a proper citation.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My father was an artist, so I grew up surrounded by other artists along with models and gallery owners, art dealers and collectors. I did try my hand at painting and drawing when I was growing up, but it was when I discovered photography that I realized that I had found my visual creative outlet. I started out shooting film, which I would develop after a day out. This introduced me to the wonders of the darkroom, something I continue to explore with the digital darkroom.

I was also an avid reader, so writing is something that I always dabbled in. Fiction and poetry when I was younger, switching to non-fiction around college. I started out writing some book and music reviews for local magazines, then photo-related pieces for online publications. Once I realized I could combine travel writing with my photography, I knew I was onto a combination that I wanted to explore. My next book, On to Plan C: A Return to Travel, will be the first one combining my travel writing and photography.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I love delis. When I was younger, I spent every birthday at Art’s Delicatessen in Studio City. You also can’t beat the pastrami at Langer’s near MacArthur Park. Los Angeles is also home to two restaurants claiming to be the originators of the French dip—Phillippe’s and Cole’s. Both have different takes on the sandwich, so we’d go to both. I also can’t visit Santa Monica without going to Ye Olde King’s Head, a British pub offering fish and chips, along with Sunday roast.

For sights, I’d head out of town. I like to take guests to areas they might not realize are in Southern California. It’s a bit of a drive, but we’d head out to Joshua Tree. Not only is the landscape distinctive in the area and in the park, but there are some other interesting things to be found. One is Pioneertown, which was It was founded in 1946 by a group of Hollywood investors, including actors Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, as a Western movie set.

The town was designed to look like an Old West frontier town, complete with a saloon, jail, hotel, and other buildings. Many movies and television shows were filmed in Pioneertown during the 1940s and 1950s, including The Cisco Kid and The Gene Autry Show. Today, many of the original buildings have been restored and repurposed as shops, restaurants, and live music venues. The town also hosts a number of events throughout the year, including an annual Wild West festival and a classic car show.

A hidden gem in Joshua Tree is the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum. It was created by artist Noah Purifoy, who worked on the site from 1989 until his death in 2004. The museum features over 100 sculptures and installations made from found objects and materials, including car parts, scrap metal, and old appliances. Purifoy’s works explore themes of social and political issues, such as racism, poverty, and environmental degradation. The museum is open to the public, free of charge, and is maintained by the Noah Purifoy Foundation.

Keep heading east and two more unique areas can be found: Salvation Mountain and the Anza Borrego-Galleta Meadows Sculptures. Salvation Mountain is a colorful, religious-themed art installation located in the desert near the town of Niland, California. It was created by a man named Leonard Knight, who spent over 30 years building and decorating the mountain with various Christian messages, Bible verses, and folk art. The mountain is made of adobe clay and straw, and is covered in brightly colored paint and murals.

Created by artist Ricardo Breceda, Galleta Meadows, situated in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, is a collection of over 130 large-scale metal sculptures that depict a variety of creatures and scenes from the area’s natural and cultural history. The sculptures include life-sized models of prehistoric animals like mammoths, sabertooth tigers, and dinosaurs, as well as more recent additions like bighorn sheep, wild horses, and camels. There are also sculptures of cowboys, prospectors, and other figures from the area’s mining and ranching past.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Whatever success I’ve had can be attributed to my wife. We’re both travelers, in fact we met on tour in Tunisia. She’s someone I can bounce ideas off of, whether it be where to travel to next or a new idea for a book. She also has a very good sense of direction, leaving me to photograph freely, knowing she knows exactly where we are. She’s the person I show my first drafts to, and she helps me select photos to either submit for publication. She helped me figure out the travels tales to include in my first book, Can’t Get Here from There: Fifty Tales of Travel, and is presently helping me select the photos to include in the book I’m currently working on.

Website: https://jeremiahgilbert.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jg_travels/