1 : the art of describing or mapping a region or district
2 : a description or map of a region; also : the physical conformation and features of such a region

This isn't so easy to do here. The art of seeing underpins the art of describing, and the art of seeing is caught up in the art of understanding what goes on around you. It's why travel writing is based on the actor as opposed to the surroundings, which it is simply assumed that the article is about. It's not, it's about the narrative process that makes the traveller seem like you and by extension you can imagine yourself in a place that's barely described, because the placement of yourself in someplace that isn't your livingroom or bathroom or magazine stand or whatever is good enough; it's good enough that you can project yourself across the page, with a nice, glossy photo of some bikini-chick paddling a goat-skin canoe down some Amazonic tributary.

The ghostly effrevescence of the reality described in a travelogue is almost obscene, denuding the actual people who feel a connection to that place; drawing the place up like a three-year-old might do. It's pathetic. A billion words spring up from the tiny nuances of a single gesture in a single transaction with the onion vendor. They, in a 500 word essay on the "Delights of Saint Croix," go, understandably, underreported.

Enjoy this. I'll try to throw a billion words at the onion lady, in my spare time and maybe one or two people will pick up on it.