Tag: Traveling
-
The Faces We Remember
Some faces are impossible to forget. Squinting eyes, furrowed brows—these details sear our memories and attach themselves to moments in our lives. Like scar tissue, they heal lumpy and imperfect, and remind us of times when the world was beautiful, or when it all came crashing down. I remember his face hovering above me as…
-
Gimme Shelter
The sound ripples across the surface of the crowd, invading each ear as it moves. Waves pummel three small bones in the middle ear and ignite vibrations in the cochlea fluid. Ripples in the fluid kickstart 25,000 nerve endings, transferring the vibrations into electrical impulses and sending them to the brain via the auditory nerve.…
-
Bywater, New Orleans
The sun bears down on the morning like it has something to prove. The heat is heavy and moist and raises sweat from the pores. UV rays search for patches of exposed skin and torch them in minutes. Anywhere else, the temperature would be a real distraction. But here, pinched between St. Claude Avenue and…
-
Zen Camp, Poland
Along a winding dirt road in the Polish countryside rests a model Japanese village. Its wooden bridges connect manicured pathways, while its pools reflect images of clouds as they dance across the sky. A stream trickles below the bridges and feeds into the mouth of a man-made pond. Tadpoles wiggle their tails like rudders near…
-
Riga, Latvia
There’s an odd dichotomy that exists for many travelers and it often manifests as a type of illusion. The more one travels, the smaller the world becomes. Patterns emerge in human behavior, making distant cultures feel less like foreign enigmas. Landscapes group themselves with other landscapes; bucolic pastures have the same rural lull from England…
-
Tallinn, Estonia
Tallinn, you magnificent bastard! Your streets transport me back to my early days in Europe, when, as a 20-year-old, the alleyways of Brugge and Bordeaux gobbled me up. Your facades and turrets cast medieval shadows similar to those in Prague and Dubrovnik. And your stone cellars, with their crumbling archways, lead into your bowels like…
-
Helsinki, Finland
Raindrops plunge into the Baltic Sea, fusing together like infants returning to their mother’s womb. They’re fast and audible as they plop against the surface and dissipate. Tonight, their brothers and sisters will cool with the evening and morph into snowflakes. They’ll drift through the air and coat the rooftops and city sidewalks in a…
-
Bhutan — Part 2
I’m alive here. Mountain air rushes through the caverns and folds of my chest with each inhale. The pinch in my upper back has finally released and it feels like I’ve stolen the shoulders of a younger man. My mind is light, as if the strings of attachment have been snipped from the world’s yanking…
-
Bhutan — Part 1
*Below is part 1 of a subsequent piece I’ll publish next week, detailing the feeling and essence of Bhutan as a traveler traversing its landscape. I want to write about Nepal and share the wonders I saw during my recent visit. I want to describe the sensation of seeing my first rhino in the wild…
-
Snow Leopards
*The following is from my journey to Ladakh, India, in March 2022, in search of snow leopards. The morning sun crested the eastern ridge of the Sham Valley, warming the contents of its path as it moved. It peered through windows, past half-closed curtains, and pried sleeping eyes from the last bits of dreaming. Legs…