Travel magazines and the demise of Wend

Wend magazine was, as a recent article says, a “publication(s) concerned not with vacations but with travel as a transcendental bridge between cultures … a mag(s) … different … in that they (sic) privilege 'authenticity' above style and are conscious of the serious social and environmental issues facing our planet.”

I came across a copy of it a few years back at Taylor Books here in Charleston, and I was hooked. That first issue got passed around by a few of my friends (whoever ended up with it, if you’re reading this I want it back.) I bought it at the newsstand regularly after that, each time I caught a new cover peeking out from its perch between Backpacker and Outside.

As this article points out, Wend died a quiet death recently, its obituary left unwritten amid the abundance of stories published, almost daily, about the rise and fall of print media writ large.

I won’t take up time lamenting the loss of print media. That story’s been written a thousand times, too. I will never own an “e-reader” or other such nonsense; you’ll find much more poetic (and less curmudgeonly) treatises about the failures of Nooks, Kindles and the like. Maybe I’m a dinosaur. Maybe I just “don’t get it.” I’m OK with that.

No, I’ll just speak out into the ether, hoping someone affiliated with Wend during its “prominence” hears this:

I loved the magazine, and miss it. Thanks for everything.