Lomagnupur, Iceland
Green Ice: I could tell that something far greater was around us, reaching out to the crest of our horizon and beyond. We pulled over our camper van and decided to take a look from above. The Earth came alive. Veins of color and life spread out before us. It was incredibly hard not to anthropomorphize this experience -- it is still difficult not to see ourselves in the landscape, even today as I look back on it. Alluvial flows fingered down each side of the highway. A spine, nerves, and vasculature were in full display. The dwindling commodity of battery power is the only thing that forced us to leave.
Mývatn, Iceland
Sulphur Snake: Mývatn is a violent and wonderful place. Leading into the mountains that border the lake, auburn flats spew poisonous sulfur gas. The smell is, well, notable. It is one of the few places that I came in contact with bugs -- sulphur loving midges that swarm you as you traverse the landscape: Eldhus Djofulsins (Hell's Kitchen). The lake, not ironically, is named after the midge: Myvatn. It's an exciting place, truly. The heat from the vents is scalding and dangerous. It gives context to the national pastime of this place: The hot springs that dot across the country. As a photographer, I reveled in it. So many urbanites spend money on fog machines and fancy lights. Myvatn provides this with ease. Beyond the snaking highway, a hot springs awaits with a sprawling view that I found to be one of the best in the country.
Jökulsárlón Lagoon, Iceland
Titan: I’m no religious man, but I can see how God may exist. Not in the omnipotent, active way that many might think. No, God likely acts on us, passively, such as the sunlight firing down and atomizing atop frozen ice. In wartime, bright lights from above, flashes, flares of heat, would send any good soldier running for cover. This titan would be a prime target for an enemy who sought the big catch. In this case, no battle exists except for the one in which my attention has too many beautiful targets to keep a lock on. Quickly, though, the main objective takes over all the senses. It rolls into view as the pride of the fleet. The sun refracts off its surface like glitter, gold. It would be hard for me to argue the idea that this ice titan might even glow in the darkness of starlight. Yes, this is God imbued into all things around us. But what is God then? Other than our natural human ability to be moved by nature alone? Maybe this has been God all along? Maybe its just us? Look upon it.
Seljalandsfoss, Iceland
Orvis Aria: I would like to say that I didn't join the heard of bipedal hominids galloping through the walkways, but I did. Seljalandsfoss is a site to behold, but the possibility of free roaming sheep posing before the grand falls was too hard for any of us to pass up. This is one of those moments where reality and art collide. Yes, I was able to bend down and fold myself into a ball, placing my camera below a barrier chain, firing away like a madman, only briefly in front of the human herd trying to do the same thing, enough so that I was able to capture these beauties on their own. No, I wasn't alone, there were people everywhere, tourists abound (I was one of them). I'd like to think that the sheep knew I came to them with genuine intent. I'm sure that's why they stopped to look at me and no one else. I know it be true. Thank you friends. I do feel very lucky to have captured this shot.
Jökulsárlón Lagoon, Iceland
Ancestor: Jökulsárlón Lagoon is populated with iridescent fragments of glacial ice. This body of water is the product of a receding glacier called Breiðamerkurjökull. It has been growing steadily since the early 20th century. As you float through these neighbors, gliding past their faces, you are struck with the poignance of what their existence means: Old, cold history. The grooves and sharp edges, some of them smooth, shape their cheeks and noses. They tell a story intimately tied to this land...and to us.
(Near) Akureyri, Iceland
Herd of Light: The horses of Iceland are very unique. Their mane tries to tame the wind, but the effort is futile. They are stout animals, delivered to these shores by the Norse people and serve as the only type of horse found in Iceland. Once again, I forced us to pull over as el sol set beyond the mountain range. A herd congregated in the field, a flock of light flares collected on my lens.
Lomagnipur, Iceland
Terra Skin: I didn't expect to find dragons here. In fact, I submit to you that I didn't believe in the mythical beasts before now. I'm a man of science, after all. On certain occasions, spanning the arch of time, one finds themselves faced with the unbelievable, and yet, the very real, tangible fact that something exists beyond the scope of their comprehension. I flew the drone hard into the wind. It swayed with each gust, but its trusty little rotors whirred in place. Looking down from many feet high, I bore witness to the clear and present fact that a dragon lay beneath my feet. The scars of battle, healed and calcified, greener now -- much like the redness of my fair skin after crossing paths with danger -- lay strewn across the land. I half expected to rise into the air myself, the dragon awakening under my prying eyes. For now, it slept. I decided to leave him be. I thanked him for his hospitality, walking through the ridges and boulder sized scales of his fortified and storied armor.
Jökulsárlón Lagoon, Iceland
Chromatic Streak: As soon as I saw it, the chase was on. It ran from me over many landscapes: Mountains and prairies, resting over the Jökulsárlón Lagoon. I really couldn't believe that I caught it there, that it would exist in my presence for more than an hour (or so it felt that long). I hunted its chromatic spectrum and it gave in, staying with me for a time. I admired it as the rainbow laid across the shrinking Breiðamerkurjökull Glacier. A large glacial chunk anchored it to the lagoon -- a partner in crime that I would like to thank some day.
The Gornergratbahn, Switzerland
The Gornergratbahn (Gornergrat Train) is many things: The second highest railway in Europe and the second electrical railway in the world, to name a few. If you find yourself in a valley with the Matterhorn towering above, piercing your skyline, it’s also something that you should ride. The train climbs the mountains surrounding the car-less town of Zermatt. It’s fitting that an electric railway leaves, and returns to, a place populated with electric vehicles, devoid of combustion engines. The air is clean, to say the least. Your lungs expand with ease. It’s a beautiful thing, a tangible feeling. Heading southeast from Zermatt to the top of Gornergrat Mountain at 10,285 feet (3,315m), you arrive atop a peak overlooking the second longest glacier in the Alps: Gorner Glacier.
Trains are one of my favorite forms of transit. The hum and shake of the car is meditative. Visuals dance by the window, creating a running cinema, as you get an authentic feel for the land that you’re inhabiting. My affection for train travel began when I took the ViaRail through Canada as a young child. The peace of that experience still populates my dreams to this day. It’s referential to a time when things were allowed to be slower. It was acceptable to take your time. You could enjoy the world around you, landscapes gliding by, while breaking bread and sipping coffee with fellow explorers. Everyone has a story, whether they’re coming from a place or seeking a destination.
The International Space Station has its Cupola, we have our train windows, our apertures to the magnificent vistas that paint our world.
The International Space Station has its Cupola, we have our train windows, our apertures to the magnificent vistas that paint our world.
We gently rock up the mountain on the Gornergratbahn. An amber colored time capsule that began running over 100 years ago.
I hope that you find yourself on a train someday, climbing into the mountains, the air thinning, the cold biting just a bit more, the peaks coming into view…I hope that you find yourself here…
It was another good day...
Tabo Monastary, India
I stepped in between the structures of this ancient place. The early morning air sat dry and crisp on my skin. The ridges of the Himalayan Mountains, parched and sun-baked, peered down as a maroon figure moved amongst the beige buildings. With flashes of green life abutting the walkway, his thoughtful stroll stood as a stark contrast to the harshness and monotone aesthetic of the surrounding geologic fortress that is the Himalayas.
This monastery is over 1000 years old with a horizontal mandala inside the main temple. A deeper past peaks from under each flake of paint. Years of layered religious iconography are illustrated over the other, chipping away in places — history showing its face.
As the late afternoon draped over us, we learned to play cricket, losing the occasional ball as it cascaded off the steep cliff that marked the edge of our field. The younger monks played with us, using their robes to stop the ball -- not a legal move, but I was just learning the game, so who knows. Their soccer skills, playing in sandals, were far superior to my altitude drained lungs and heavy hiking boots.
They beat us pretty bad.
We all won.
It was a good day…
It was a good day…
Boyd Hill Nature Preserve, My Father
Throughout my life, I’ve consistently been overcome with a ground shaking level of curiosity, of intrigue. It’s not hard for me to understand where this comes from. There is, I’m sure, some innate nature that compels me. I feel very deeply, however, that it has a lot to do with nurture. I feel lucky, or as my mid 70’s adopted grandma would say, in a thick Southern African American affirmation, “Blessed.” My mother and my father are curious people. They left home when they could and ended up, independently, in far off places, areas that they had to adapt to. They took on the challenge of change, of the new. They were often exposed to the “other,” the unfamiliar, and slowly the “other” became familiar.
My father left home with a small amount of belongings on his back and hitchhiked across Canada in the 60’s. He stayed in half burnt out houses and rented a cell from a decommissioned penitentiary wing. He flowed with other humans on the fluvial cultural migration that fingered throughout the continent. He embraced change and remained hungry for the new.
While growing up, my father and I would hop into the car, just the two of us, and drive...just drive for hours. No destination, no stop, just driving and talking. We’d challenge each other, trade ideas, hash out the problems of the world, and learn. We would feed the other’s curiosity and he treated me as an intellectual equal, even when I wasn’t. It emboldened me to share myself with others, to have the guts to challenge things bigger than myself.
I’m older now and so is he. We don’t see each other as often. He raised an explorer and I explore. When we can, we still journey together.
On this day, we just walked. The canopies housed our ideas. We inspected our surroundings and let our minds be taken with the life of this place: Boyd Hill. So much movement, so much in bloom — both flora and fauna, minds young and old. This photo of my father captures an essence of him that is very dear to me...looking to the sky, taking in the wonder before him...just being damn curious about it all. I hope to carry on his legacy...
It was another good day...
It was another good day...
South Carolina, Lost
I was becoming one with the road and beginning to really open up. My consciousness was relaxing into the process. Travel, for me, is one of the great equalizers in my life. With too much yin, there needs to be yang, and vice versa. I needed a buffer to think, for a time. The road is healing. It is profound and centering. Looking back on my experience in South Carolina, I kept focusing in on this photo. It’s not a particularly groundbreaking picture. It’s simple — Easy on the eyes. It’s been done. It’s no more remarkable than any other travel image — the road stretching onward into the unknown. It easily answers the question of why we quest...the allure of the unknown...what’s over the next hill?
The irony, however, is that I was actually getting quite lost on this road. My GPS had dropped out and I was being directed down a path that would request I take a left directly into a tree...no actual left available...only a tree. The fact that I kept zeroing in on this photo is poignant. I was lost. Profoundly. On all levels. My personal GPS had long been unplugged. For a time, I just drove, in life, and onto this very road. I had forgotten myself.
Soon after this image was taken, however, I would begin to find my way. I would hike into the darkness, pitch black, tunneling through the abyss with my headlamp. I would stare off into the stars, alone, truly alone, for the first time in many years. I would accept that reality, I would own it. I curled into a fetal position as the temperature dropped to freezing. I would awake to the sounds of life all around me.
I would emerge...
I would emerge..
I would be me.
It was another good day…
It was another good day…
Perito Moreno Glacier
We finished our fieldwork in the rolling expanse of Santa Cruz and ended back in El Calafate. Before taking the travelers pilgrimage to El Chalten, we decided to take the advice of the locals and go to the Perito Moreno Glacier. Please go. Just head south, if you aren't already living there, and go. It is immense. It is beautiful. You are small in its presence. It's good to be humbled by nature -- it drives me to care more than I thought I could.
There's a sound that comes with the Glacier that I cannot fully relay to you. It's familiar to me only in an experience I had when a boulder rolled off of a cliff in India. I heard it resonate throughout the valley, crashing against rock-faces on its way down— a thousand feet or more to its resting place. The calving of ice is magnificent. You feel it. It's almost akin to why I'm drawn to music with deep drums or low frequency bass rumbles. It vibrates you, deep inside. It echoes for miles. I know what it is, I know what I'm hearing, but it's still hard to process the magnanimity of it. Without context, without my modern sensibilities, without my iPhone in hand, or laminated pictorials explaining the science of this event, this would be Zeus. This would be the clashing of Titans and I would pay penance for the wrongs that I'd perceived I had done. It's frightening on an evolutionary level. It's exciting in the present. An excitement that shakes the fibers of my being.
I wanted to capture the sound. I waited with a high definition sound recorder. I missed it each time. As soon as I let my guard down, it happened again. My mind remembers it though. My soul will take it with me into the expanse of what is to come.
It was a good day…
It was a good day…
Cerro Solo
We hiked for a couple of hours, up through the greenery of the foothills. Rolling paths became shrouded by the lower forest canopy. The sun peered through basil colored leaves. In our distant view, the mountains of Cerro Solo, Torre, and Fitz Roy towered — lock armed in unity. They looked down at us, watching as we popped in and out of the the brush. Various lookouts along the way flickered the mountain peeks into our view, like sparrows flitting in and out the brush. The hike became more arduous and steep, more barren and rocky. We were told that we would reach a viewpoint where all the peaks would be visible. Condors dived off of the cliffs above us, riding the headwinds up and down. We forged on, but the peaks remained obscured: Onward. Before us lay a much higher point with a few small black dots atop the crest of its head. I took out my zoom lens and peered up at the ants moving around up there. They were bipedal. THAT was our destination. A steep shale mound stood between us and our view. We moved slowly. We began to stop every 10 minutes to catch our breath. We were scrambling up loose slate chips that slid out from under our feet and hands. It went on for awhile. We made it though...shoulder to shoulder with the condors. Cerro Solo stood out to me. A huge, sloped, snow capped mountain top, crisp and untouched. We broke out the ziplock bagged spaghetti we’d made the night before. My partner fell asleep immediately. I stood tall in the wind. The cold bit at my ears and nose. It was immense. I was a bit awestruck. It felt like a crucible to reach it. Nothing too crazy, but challenging enough. It was totally worth it. I hope you’ll find yourself there.
It was another good day…
It was another good day…
Congaree National Park
As I slowly awoke, my joints and muscles loosened their grip from the fertile position I had taken to conserve heat. The sound of wind, of birds, spiraled into my ear. The rubbing of bark against bark created a wooden orchestra in surround sound. Congaree is a flood plane with huge cypress trees that drip upward from the swamps. Taller and taller, they connect at the canopy level. Their roots run under my feet, knobby thumbs peaking from the soil at the bases of these massive trees.
I needed to walk that day. I needed my mind to run its course. I had some things that I needed to work out. A year’s full of stress had penetrated my physical and spiritual being in places that I hadn’t even realized. It needed to come up. This was the first place in a long time where I had truly felt alone. It was good. I connected with my surroundings, they connected with me and, subsequently, I connected back to myself through my environment. The circle was complete. Thoreau, Muir, and Walden knew a thing or two, I guess.
I had hiked in under the cover of total pitch darkness. A bit lost, my headlamp tunneled my path, my body ceased to exist beyond the light. And now, I emerged from the forrest a new man. The adventure was just beginning.
It was another good day…
It was another good day…
Kinner Camps, Sangla
We travelled for a couple of days — moving out of the heat and wet dust of New Delhi, through Chandigarh, and into the foothills of the Himalayas. The roads narrowed, the cliffs grew steeper, the margin of error became more slim. The tension and excitement was palpable. These roads are graves. These roads are magnificent. The mountains rise and rise.
This leg of our journey passed through a huge (and controversial) dam project and ended at Kinner Camps. It's one of the most beautiful places I've stayed. Indian tapestries hung from the ceilings of our tents, the clear skies framed the Himalayan moon in ways that I've never known Earth's sibling to look.
We All fell asleep under the stars. La Luna illuminated the skyscape with a deep blue hue. The sounds of a large river below roared me to sleep.
It was a good day...
It was a good day...
