Curiosity, Travel and Change
Me in the hot springs There is something disconcerting about that helplessness you feel when you learn you will spend the next two days without access to email or social media. You don’t want to believe you are one of those people so hopelessly addicted to your phone that its loss causes anxiety. But you …
We arrived at Caleta Tortel and parked at the edge of this tiny town near the end of the Carretera Austral, having driven another 12 miles on a dirt side road till we reached the porous coastline of Patagonia. We strapped on backpacks with our stuff for two days, and started walking. Walking to our …
Continue reading "Chile Part 2: Caleta Tortel, the end of the road."
Chile is almost as long as the US is wide, but it snakes along the Pacific Ocean for 2700 miles, hemmed in by its portion of the 5,500-mile Andes range. Most of its 17 million people live in the center, within a couple of hours of Santiago and at its extreme ends are sparsely populated …
It’s hard to love Spring in the Adirondacks. Indeed, “Spring” is a bit of a misnomer. The season I had come to think of as “Spring”--warm days, lush with the lavender crocus, yellow forsythia and the magenta azaleas—arrives in the Adirondacks but a few days before Summer. Until then, the snow lingers, disappears slowly, then …
I know I’m late to the party, but I found it. I’m talking about the mid-week season pass at Gore Mountain. I live a few miles away from the mountain and this year, finally, I joined the weekday early morning skiing crowd. I’m 65 years old and I feel like I’ve joined one of those …
Continue reading "My Senior Early Bird Special — on the Mountain"
Capulalpám de Mendez is a pueblo mágico perched high in the Sierra Norte, reached by a curving, ascending two-hour drive from Oaxaca City. In these mountains, live people whose original language is Zapotec, not Spanish, who fight to preserve their traditions, and who live with a profound understanding of nature. View toward the villages Capulalpám …
Continue reading "The Sierra Norte: Walking in the land of the Zapotec"
The view from my home Not long before the world went into lockdown, I traded the city for the country. For almost 40 years, I lived on busy Philadelphia streets, awakened at times by sirens and horns. For all those years, I reveled in the messiness and color of urban life and prowled many corners …
I admit that I humored Pete when he said he wanted the Road Trip to stop in Death Valley. He had grown up in California and had never seen it. I imagined a boring, flat, scorching, dusty wasteland hardly worth the detour. Boy, was I wrong. Death Valley is dazzling, in the way only an …
It's good to be reminded that people have always inhabited places we now call "wilderness". The Gila Wilderness, home to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, was the first wilderness area designated by Congress in 1924. I note that the Gila Wilderness claims to be the "first wilderness in the world", ignoring the fact that New York …
Continue reading "There were people here: The Gila Cliff Dwellings, New Mexico"
Old and On the Way 