For a tourist, Maui reflects the tension of what it means to travel responsibly


From the plane, the island of Maui looks improbably small — you can spot the entire coastline through a single window. The tallest point of the island, Haleakala, reaches 10,000 feet into the air, and yet seemed, to this hiker cozy in her wing seat, walkable — like a moderate day hike rather than a high-altitude ascent.

In mid-July, my husband and I spent two weeks in Maui. The trip, which I’d booked at the end of March after receiving my second vaccine shot, was our first to Hawaii. My thinking had been this: I wanted to go somewhere that felt very different from home — skip the evergreens and chilly lakes for the kind of humidity that never leaves your skin — but I also wanted to go somewhere with the same vaccine opportunities. After a year of being grounded due to the pandemic, I wanted my travel to be as ethical as possible. Read full travel article here.

Maui