Author Archive
The town of Rio Verde
[Ecuador] Moritz Thomsen is one of the couple writers who has spoken most deeply to me. In 1965, when he was 45 or so, he gave up pig farming in California and joined the Peace Corps. He ended up staying the rest of his life in Ecuador, buying a farm and living among the poorest […]
Inside Krishna Khadka’s house near Pokhara
[Nepal] There is this store in the University Village, Seattle, called Caldwell’s, and it is filled with the most exquisite array of very expensive gift objects, clocks, frames, scarves, rugs, imported art – all seemingly of such subtle and refined craftsmanship. Whenever I walk by, affluent and beautiful looking people are coming in and out. […]
The city of Pokhara
[Nepal] In the Cascades, the typical view of a mountain has one looking up between 3,000 and 5,000 feet. I remember my excitement years ago looking up from Jenny Lake at the Tetons. 7,000 feet from valley floor to the top of Mount Owen. Fantastic. It’s 19 nautical miles between Pokhara – which sits at […]
Hiking towards 17,500 foot Throng La
[Nepal] Two hours after this picture was taken I was in bad shape. I went too quickly from 12 to 15,000 feet and hit real altitude sickness. I had a night of delirium, nausea, and migraine. People were worried, but by morning I was improving. Otherwise I would have joined the ranks of “tourists carried […]
Between Pisang and Manang
[Nepal] One of the most spectacular days of hiking in my entire life was from Pisang to Manang. Sauntering along the valley floor in the sun looking straight up at 12,000 feet of rock and snow towering above. As I walked along, I found myself in conversation with a young man who was headed back […]
Near Muktinath
[Nepal] That original 1987 trek was arranged by “Journeys” – a Michigan outfitter. There were some great people on that trip, and over these last years we’ve kept in touch, including several reunions involving people flying in from all over the country.
Overnight bus from Sofia to Istanbul
[Turkey] I feel a great deal of warmth towards and from these Muslim men. One of them speaks good English, and translates. With the Turkish music blaring, a swirling nicotine haze, and the bus hurtling down the pitch black highway, we ask each other questions. “Why did you (America) shoot down the Airbus?” asked the […]
The town of Sibiu
[Romania] I’ve crossed the Hungarian border and had entered the strangeness of Romania. I’m on a train in Transylvania, and there isn’t a person who speaks a word of English. I’m baffled, and can’t figure out where I am. Nothing makes any sense. We enter a small city, and the train just stops in industrial […]
I meet Bistra in Sofia
[Bulgaria] I had a name of someone to look up. Bistra Dragon treated me to a magical day. She was 56 and a retired biochemist who had worked for 30 years in a state research lab. Graduate degrees from the University of Moscow. Work relating to something in proteins. Serious, earnest, devout, enormous energy. We […]
Up the Rio Coco
[Nicaragua] I helped put a group of people together to go look at social projects along the Coco River. Our agreement was to find a worthy project and then work together over three years to support it through helping to raise money in Seattle. (Photo essay on the venture philanthropy trip) Later, we did some […]
Lake Atitlan and the stolen pack
[Guatemala] Near the end of our trip to Guatemala, we took a small tourist boat on a day’s excursion around the lake, stopping at different towns. We planned to get off and stay at a place that we had heard was about the most beautiful place in the world. It was one of those days […]
Up the Rio Santiago to Playa de Oro
[Ecuador] I observed a development project that was helping several communities of Afro-Ecuadorians living up a coastal river. We had missed the plane to Esmeraldas from Quito. So then, in the enveloping equatorial darkness, we stuck all the video gear into one of the trucks and took off for the 12 hour climb over the […]
Sophie tastes world travel as we walk in Chichicastenango
[Guatemala] My ten year old daughter, Sophie, gets her first glimpse of the larger world though a backpack trip to Guatemala. I wondered how she’d do. I found an entirely different layer of experience as I traveled largely through her eyes. We got off the plane in Guatemala City, and jumped right in a cab […]
Petersburg
[Alaska] A group of us were on a “Zen Kayaking” trip. It was led by a monk/spiritual leader, and we spent almost the entire week in silence observing various meditation rituals. I am exactly the sort of person who loves the idea of meditation, yet am pretty much a disaster at it. Neither my body […]
Delicate Arch, Utah: The family hikes together
[Southwest USA] I had the fun of teaching my 65 year old mother how to enjoy a hike. “Go slow and steady – even at snail’s pace – and don’t let yourself become even remotely winded. Don’t stop either. See how hard it is to make yourself go slowly?” My parents had a great time. […]
Pasayten wilderness, Washington State
[West Coast, USA] Solo backpacking delivers huge rewards. I spent a week alone in this remote area. I’m quickly reminded again of what carrying a 50 pound pack is all about. I think of the enormous strength and endurance of athletes, of just what the human body can do. I consider the crushing physical hardships […]
A street on the island of Myconos, Greece
Greece The third father/daughter trip to Greece departed on the second day of the Gulf War II, 2003. The week before, I was at a meeting with eight people who all had kids. I said, “Would you go to Greece next week with a 12 year old?” “No way!” was the collective response. I got […]
Southern Luzon and Taal Volcano
[Philippines] It’s about two in the morning, and we’re standing on a busy street corner in Quezon City, a part of Manila. We’ve been brought here by outreach workers from a small organization working to help teenage prostitutes create alternatives to lives that seem to us to be completely miserable. It’s sweltering even at this […]
The world that will remain in my imagination
[Africa] I was reading a magazine story about people who come here to climb the pinnacles seen in the distance. I went right downstairs and I did an image search on “Cameroon” and this was the first picture that came up. Wow. It represents all the places I’ve never been, and will never get to […]
Tent and kayak in Lake Powell
[Lake Powell] I put my fully loaded kayak in a skiff that I rented from Antelope Point Marina in Page, Arizona. A guy John drove me 52 miles north into Utah to Oak Canyon and dropped me off. It was hot, windy, and the sun was blasting, and I sat on a spit of sandstone […]
Isabel and Meri
[Peru] I was in Peru hiking and spent the first day in Lima walking around. An attractive, shabbily dressed woman approached me who proposed being my guide for a city tour. She had a portfolio of pictures of her with other tourists and her name was Isabel. As we talked another woman came up and […]
Family
[Italy] I write this and it’s almost 2006. I had some sense in the mid 1990s that there would be an evolution in my travel interests, and that I would arrive at a point in which my family would be ready to travel. I always imagined that I would see more of Europe with my […]
Lower Marisandi river
[Nepal] Sometime in the early 1980’s, a friend showed me his slides of Nepal. I was mesmerized. Over the next few years, I kept thinking about Nepal, and in 1987 I went with my girlfriend Juli (she later became my wife) on a trek around Annapurna. Twenty one amazing days had me deciding to devote […]