Posts tagged “environment”

I was there.

Posted on 27 May 2018

It’s easy to forget. I decided to look through a batch of photos in my collection from almost six years ago. Many hadn’t even been edited. The beauty of where I’d been jars me. It echoes better in my mind now that I scroll through these images again. I am not sure if I’ll ever be in as stunning of a place as southwestern Bolivia again. Everywhere you look is a shock to the soul. The vast and varied altiplano with its scattered settlements is so far removed from my daily life. But, I was there. I was there. I was there.

Categories: Environment, Photography, Travel

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The Sun and the Moon and Here We Are

Posted on 8 January 2018

The one-hour bus ride from Mexico City turned into three but at least buskers kept us company with their music. Traffic sped, slowed, and crawled to an almost stop. One accident ahead was all it took to throw everything off. At one point, Teotihuacán was the largest city in the Western hemisphere, and one of the largest in the world, home to some 100,000 people, perhaps more. Moreover, though we don’t know exactly who built it, we do know that multiple ethnicities lived there. Its grandiosity is all the more staggering when you consider it was constructed roughly 2,000 years ago. Humans have really been very capable for a very long time. What else have we been? Teotihuacán takes time to wander. We walked…

Categories: Society, Travel

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The Edge We’re On

Posted on 22 November 2017

You can tell you’re on the east side of the mountains. It’s drier, more grey-orange, scrubby. The ground smolders around us as we drive up to the trailhead, remnants of the summer’s fires. It’s getting angrier. The earth, I mean. And I understand. The mountains are a great place to highlight precariousness. It’s not just that I nearly froze up walking along in a spot where the trail narrowed and the rocky land to my left slid down, down, down. It’s that even these enormous mountains are fragile, in a way. If you pay attention, you can tell. Mountains are edges: things hold on until they can’t anymore. And then something’s falling. Don’t walk off the path. And I mean because of the vegetation.…

Categories: Environment

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Erosion

Posted on 4 August 2017

I’ve learned I can simultaneously expand with wonder and implode with despair. It’s a hard thing, working in a beautiful place and knowing it’s degraded, its soils are crumbling, rolling into the lake, leaving scars of absence. It’s also a hard thing to be degraded, to be regarded either too hard or too little, so like the soil you run away and scars mark your retreat. Walking back to my tent-room after tracking down documents, I’m greeted by a man who shakes my hand and then refuses to let go, he grips harder and I yank away and shuddering, hurry off. He knows exactly to where and I don’t like that. I have to work, or I don’t have to but I want to,…

Categories: Environment, Travel

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A Place Is What It Is

Posted on 14 March 2017

Alaska in winter. Skeptical and bemused expressions acknowledged my plans. “What will the temperature be? Will there be any daylight?” Interesting questions and yet, the answers don’t matter. My friend alerted me to an airline ticket sale to Fairbanks, where she lives. I could get cheap tickets through February. So, I went when I could go and I was glad. February is a reality. Winter in Alaska is a longer reality. The point is: I’ll go at any accessible time. The corollary is: I want to see a place for what it is, not what I want it to be. Of course, everyone has a mental filter through which their impressions fall. What is called reality is only a part-truth, for no one can…

Categories: Travel

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