Northeast travel photographer publishes a book

In her 32 years, Autumn Carolynn has visited 31 countries and 48 states, and has just published a book about how she did it. A freelance travel writer and photographer based in Minneapolis, her book, “Traveling in Wonder: A Travel Photographer’s Tales of Wanderlust,” was released on Feb. 24 along with an exhibition of her travel photos at the Northrup King Building, where she maintains an artist space.

Carolynn said, “Travel, writing and photography have been immensely important throughout my life and have been woven into the person I am today.” 

She grew up in a Chicago suburb, and followed in her photographer father’s footsteps, using his old Nikon camera for a film photography course offered at her high school. After graduation, she attended Illinois State University and Canterbury Christ Church University in England, getting a degree in English with emphasis in creative writing. 

It was as a student abroad, in the fall of 2013, that Carolynn began her prodigious travel exploits, visiting 14 European countries in 13 weeks. By Christmas, she had set foot in Scotland, Germany, Ireland, France, Norway, Italy, the Vatican, Austria, Hungary, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands.

In the book, the chapter for each country begins with a practical list: her destination and how she got there, how long she stayed, what she packed, what she spent and “lessons learned,” notes to herself on what the experience has taught her. She also shows an affinity for getting along with strangers, whether in the various hostels which made up most of her travel lodgings, or spontaneously at crowded tourist attractions and off-the-beaten-path destinations. She also notes the need for creative sleeping spaces, including airport benches and restaurant booths.

At the end of her study abroad program, Carolynn returned to the U.S., still nursing a strong desire to travel further. She bought a one-way ticket to Sidney, Australia, but at the last moment held off, “trusting my gut,” and instead applied to several airlines to become a flight attendant, something she felt would feed her wanderlust. She was accepted at Delta, and in her two years with the airline added Iceland, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and several US states to her life itinerary. 

Even while weathering anxiety, a cancer scare, a fractured foot and vertigo during her stint, she called being a flight attendant “one of the greatest things ever to happen to me.” But her recent marriage and a move to a city not near her flight hub made her decide that it was time for a change.

Carolynn’s next career move was becoming a professional travel agent, where she quickly added visits to Asia and South America to her growing travel list. She and her husband joined a local Wisconsin church and became youth group leaders. But change came again when her husband accepted a job in Minnesota. 

In late 2018, knowing they wouldn’t be able to travel for a while after resettling, they decided to make a whirlwind (five countries in five days) trip to the Christkindlemarkts in Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland. They were able to pull it off, but not without Airbnb problems, food poisoning, crazy traffic and vertigo. 

Carolynn continued as a travel agent, creating PowerPoint presentations to prepare trips for global corporations. But around the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, she decided to leave the corporate world and combine two things she loved most, travel and photography, into a business. She dug up old memory cards (finding she had more than 80,000 images of her travels), created a website and got a business license from the state. She said that, “Soon enough, the adventures of setting up art shows, matting prints on my living room table, and finding joy in filling orders turned into writing … ‘Traveling in Wonder’.”

“Traveling in Wonder” has details on transportation, food, places to visit, and lots of lovely photography and would serve as a useful guide for any traveler. But it is also a diary of someone with a great will to see and do things, almost always on her own, and overcome setbacks and reap a great amount of satisfaction in doing so. She has checked off a bucket list that included climbing Machu Picchu, visiting the Great Barrier Reef, seeing the Northern Lights in Norway, tossing coins in the Trevi Fountain in Rome, touring John Lennon’s bedroom in England, exploring the temples in Tokyo and ziplining in the Smoky Mountains. Carolynn’s adventures could also serve as a model for women traveling alone, on how to plan, as well as how to adapt. 

She continues to travel, with trips made to Morocco, Portugal, Costa Rica and South Korea. Asked for her favorite country, she quickly answered Norway. Where would she like to go that has so far been beyond her reach? Antarctica. As she writes in a “Lessons learned,” from one of her trips, “You may not understand the full journey, but in time it will make sense.”