Beneath the Mountain of Birds

Travels in Polynesia, Melanesia, and Australia

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the author published numerous travel articles about Polynesia, Melanesia, and Australia in American magazines and newspapers. This collection of 23 articles contains 20 republished articles from those years and three never-before-published articles from the same time period. Each article has an added introductory paragraph. The articles recount backpacking adventures in Hawai'i, following in the footsteps of the French artist Paul Gauguin in Tahiti, revisiting a Māori love story in New Zealand, touring a yam garden in the Trobriand Islands in Melanesia, and exploring Australia's Aboriginal lands in the Northern Territory, among other mini-adventures.