Category: Places and Traveling
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Air and Light: My favorite outdoor photos from the last few years
I seem to like close-up photography and patterns.
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Snow Walk: My first attempt at snowshoes had a slapstick ending
I’ve never used snowshoes before. This is an account of my first attempt, which, despite ending with me feeling silly, got me wanting to try again. Even though my truck was the only vehicle at the trailhead, parking was a challenge. A succession of snow ploughs clearing the highway had…
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Anemones: They look like they’re from another planet
There are no better places than tide pools to find alien-like creatures. Sea anemones are predatory animals, but you wouldn’t know it looking at them.
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Peripheral Drinking: David Samuels goes to Polynesia
David Samuels has published an article about America, inspired by a recent visit to American Samoa. There, at the country’s extreme periphery, he sits in a tiki bar, drinks piña coladas and has thoughts such as this: A new type of consciousness has emerged, in which we neither believe nor…
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Elephant Seals: Men should try not to be like them
Animals don’t exist as cautionary tales for humans, but if they did, elephant seals would’ve clearly been created to tell men how not to behave. This time of the year, elephant seals gather on California beaches, separated from humans by yellow plastic tape and stern warnings not to approach them.…
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Ecojargon: Think like an ecologist, but don’t talk like one, please
There’s something about the way ecologists talk that makes my eyes glaze over: Prairie plants sequester carbon, prevent erosion and provide key habitat for endangered wildlife like Monarch butterflies and rusty-patched bumblebees — ecosystem services desperately needed across the Midwest. This is from an otherwise interesting and well-written article about…
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NY, NY: My first visit in New York was for the New Year, and I understood why people like that city
The first time I came to New York, I came for the New Year. My friend’s friend had gone back to Mexico for the holidays and my friend and I stayed at her apartment on the East Side. It was the first time I’d ever stayed in a building with…
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Mexico
I was the only recognizable tourist in the crowd, so of course the performer picked me. He was doing balloon animals. He asked me to hold one, and then the next, and then the next, until my arms were so full I couldn’t hold any more. He then put a…
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Little Tigers
“What you’re doing is as extravagant as keeping a pet tiger,” said my brother. “Having three kids is unheard of here.” My wife, our kids and I were spending a month in Austria, where I’m originally from and where he still lives. He wasn’t entirely serious. Big families, until recently,…
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Pyromaniac
Trying to light a camp fire when it’s raining and everything is wet is a humbling experience, and not one that practicing in dry conditions prepares you for. Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Shaman describes the process over more than seven pages without getting tedious. I’m saying that as someone who…
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Unedited
Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: “This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.” Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek
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Greece
To get to my hotel in Athens, I had to pass through a crowd composed entirely of prostitutes trying to get my attention. Many of them looked like they were from North Africa. I was 23 years old and they clearly thought they had a chance. I was curious but…
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Arctic Facts
Here are the facts I found surprising enough to highlight in my copy of Arctic Dreams: Most animals live lives in biological keeping with the earth’s twenty-four-hour period of rotation. They have neither the stamina nor the flexibility, apparently, to adapt to the variable periods of light they encounter in…
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Arctic Dreams
Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez still shows the Soviet Union on its maps of the Arctic. There is no mention of global warming, unthinkable for any contemporary report about the region. That’s because it came out in 1986, but that hardly matters. The important parts are untouched by time. One …
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New Mexico
Santa Fe was less interesting than I had thought. The place has a lot of history but it doesn’t feel alive. Too many art galleries and souvenir shops, almost to the exclusion of everything else. In the evening, on the way to a bar, my wive and I walked past…
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Wolf
Wolf by Jim Harrison is a novel about being outdoors and about traveling. It’s Harrison’s first novel, published in 1971. There is a lot in this book, and in all of Harrison’s writing, that I recognize. For example, it has been some time since I’ve been truly lost in the…
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Wood Swirl
A piece of wood that reminded me of van Gogh’s Starry Night. Nature imitating art, once again.
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In Patagonia
Bruce Chatwin’s most well-known work is In Patagonia. It’s a mix of travel writing, history and a fiction. It was first published in 1977. Below are a few paragraphs I highlighted. A hundred years ago, the Araucanians were incredibly fierce and brave. They painted their bodies red and flayed their…
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Three Days by the Lake
For three days, I went to a small lake in the Sierras. There was a dirt track that went in for 30 minutes. The lake had no designated campsites, but there were a few fire pits. I parked my SUV next to one. I didn’t make a fire, because it…
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Human Footprint
Here is an interactive world map that quantifies the human footprint based on population density, infrastructure and other metrics. The truly wild places are in Canada, Greenland, Siberia, North Africa, Brazil, Australia and the Himalayas. The data is from 2020 and I wish the publisher, the Wildlife Conservation Society, updated…
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Consider the Fish
Fishing is a bit cruel but also makes me feel closer to nature. Jon Ontario talks about this conundrum here. It’s the same tension David Foster Wallace talks about in Consider the Lobster. Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related…
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Where the Mountains are Nameless
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There’s a land – oh, it…
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Travel Tools
This is a small bag I keep in my car’s glove compartment. I’ve used the tools and repair materials it contains often enough that I consider it an excellent investment. A multitool like the Leatherman would have similar functionality, but I like the idea of having dedicated tools if space…
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Edible Plants in the Sierra Nevada: A visual guide
While backpacking, I frequently wonder if I could eat the berries I encounter. I know I can eat the blackberries but I’m unsure about everything else. That’s why I made a collage of the most important edible plants in the Sierra Nevada, where I do most of my backpacking. Everything…
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Kon-Tiki
In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl led an expedition to cross the Pacific on a raft built from balsa wood in the style of the ancient Incas. Believe, even if it’s in a weak theory, moves mountains. While building his raft, Heyerdahl was given many good reasons that his expedition would fail.…
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Outdoor Books
This is a good list of nature, travel and adventure books compiled by Ken Ilgunas. His personal preferences align more with my own than the supposedly more objective meta-list he compiled from comparable book lists. The top spots in that list are dominated by old travel books, most of them…
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Hitchhiking
After hiking through the desert for a week, I was standing on the American side of the Mexican border. I was dusty, tired, needed a change of clothes and above all, a ride. There weren’t many cars passing on the small road where the trail ended. The first one to…
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The Last Picture Show
The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurthy is set in a small Texas town in the 1950s. McMurthy didn’t idolize the time or the place, which is clearly modeled on his hometown. Instead, he pulled off the seemingly impossible: Lots of shocking descriptions of sex, but without being titillating. Sex…
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The Million Yen Melon
A friend returning from a trip to Japan told me about his experience with the fruit equivalent of Wagyu beef: the Yubari melon, grown on Hokkaido Those cantaloupes are sold for close to $100 each, and their flavor, according to my friend, is “life-changing.” There are reports of some Yubari…
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Air or Earth
A gentle reminder that, now more than ever, flying is our punishment for daring to defy gravity. Nein Quarterly (Eric Jarosinski) Air travel is the opposite of freedom. During security screening, you are told where to step and where to look, you and your belongings are searched, and everything has…
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Star Bowl Spinning Overhead
Writing by starlight Can’t see the words Fill a page Nothing there Waterfall distant sound Tree against stars Milky Way Juniper Jupiter white rock Wind dying my heart At peace a Friday night Big Dipper sits on the mountain Friends lie in their tents I sit against rock Star bowl…
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America!
Chanting USA! USA! is warranted when it comes to air conditioning. Not saying it isn’t warranted for other things too, but AC is an obvious case. American AC is superior. Part of that superiority comes from it existing where you’d want it to. Subways for example. As I’m writing this,…
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Napping Outside
One of my favorite things when I’m out backpacking or canoeing is to take an afternoon nap under a tree somewhere. Karl Heinrich Waggerl wrote about this experience in his Wagrainer Tagebuch (Wagrain diaries). Waggerl was an Austrian writer who is so unknown in the English-speaking world he only has…
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Provincial China
This summer, I returned to a city in Heilongjiang province that I had already visited around ten years ago. It is full of crumbling heavy industry and has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. It’s located two hours by car from the Siberian border, and in some…
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Small Gifts for Small Kids
Small kids travelling in Europe get gifts all the time. This started on Austrian Airlines, flying from California to Vienna. Our three daughters, aged 3, 5 and 6 got a little toy and some craft books from the flight attendants. United Airlines had never bothered with this. Once we arrived…
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Meadows
This is a mountain meadow in Lower Austria. Comparable meadows in the Sierra Nevada have fewer wildflowers and fewer insects, both in terms of absolute count and in terms of the number of species. The advantage Sierra Nevada meadows have is their wilderness, especially those that have never been grazed…
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Austria 2000-2025
This summer I spent the most time in Austria since I left more than two decades ago. I’ve written about my impressions before. In this post, I’m going over what has improved and what has gotten worse. What has gotten better: What has gotten worse: What has stayed the same:
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Dairy Products
Milk products are a constant source of confusion when traveling. Too many times have I been asked what Quark is without having an adequate answer. This graph from Wikipedia is the solution.
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Walking Vienna
Change is the only constant, but it can take a long time. This summer, I’m spending a month in Vienna. I went to high school here, and I have been back since, but never for more than a few days. Staying away gives you a new perspective. You notice what…
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A Bold Choice
Pandemic 2020 is the name of a cafe I encountered recently while walking around Vienna. I wasn’t brave enough to enter, which I now regret, because I’d like to know what kind of person chooses such a name for their business. Two more photos from the same trip:
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Colloquial States of America
I like maps, but I like this one especially. Here is something else that’s similarly juvenile and great.
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An African Abroad
A recently published review of a travelogue first published in 1963 was intriguing enough for me to order and read it. An African Abroad was written by adventurer Ọlábísí Àjàlá. Everything about him is interesting, starting with the name: Never before have I encountered anyone with so many diacritical marks…
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I have known about Annie Dillard for some time but I have never before read anything she has written. In retrospect, that was a mistake. There is no better nature writing than Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Like Richard Dawkins or Carl Sagan, Dillard possesses an awe of nature that is…
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Ted Muller
Personal websites, updated and added to over many years, tend to be more interesting than social media profiles. Klaus Dierks’ website is an example, and Nick Bostrom’s is another. I recently came across Ted Muller’s homepage while searching for information on trails in the Sierra Nevada. The trail reports on…
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Rattlesnake Creeks
My neighbor told me about a swimming hole that nobody knows about. “It’s on Rattlesnake Creek,” he said. Armed with this information, I went to Google Maps, only to discover that he had given me an ambiguous address: There are at least a dozen Rattlesnake Creeks in California. What is…
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Ineffective Alternatives
I don’t get anything out of cold medications. By the time my symptoms are severe enough that I take something, it’s already too late. The only thing that has ever works for me is rest and giving it time. You may be luckier. If you have a stuffy nose, you…
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Tree Climbing
As a kid, I liked to climb a tall fir that stood beside our house. Its branches were spread close and evenly, which made it easy. Because I was climbing close to the trunk, the needles on the outside hid me from my parents’ eyes. One of my favorite parts…
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Relax About Rain
Breathable rain jackets get damp on the inside after a few hours of rain. My solution is to not bring a rain jacket if I only expect light rain and if it’s not going to be cold. Getting wet isn’t that bad. If it’s cold or if it will rain…
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Backpacking Resources
When preparing for backcountry trips, it’s helpful to know what to expect.
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Questions about Tourism
A recent work trip to Barcelona afforded me some time to explore the city. I grew up in Vienna, which, like Barcelona, is a major tourist destination. The old towns of both cities feel similarly overrun by tourists and avoided by locals. However, when I was a kid in Vienna,…
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The Sense for an Era
A few days after graduating from my Austrian high school, I took plane to England and stayed there for most of the next twelve years. There’s much I owe to the country. My biggest debt is my entire tertiary education, paid by the British taxpayer. Twelve years is plenty of…
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Speaking Extemporaneously
The conference ended on Friday afternoon and my flight didn’t leave until Saturday. I was free to spend Friday night exploring Barcelona on my own. From my hotel near the Yacht harbor, I walked north into the old town, and kept walking for most of the next four hours. Soon,…
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When Adventure’s Lost its Meaning
In the quiet misty morning When the moon has gone to bed When the sparrows stop their singing And the sky is clear and red When the summer’s ceased its gleaming When the corn is past its prime When adventure’s lost its meaning I’ll be homeward bound in time Bind…
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Live Demos
For some time I lived in a city in the North of England. It was full of terraced brick houses. When I wasn’t working, I went for long walks along the river or across the soggy meadows surrounding the city. The only friend I made in eight months was a…
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Using My Phone as a Microscope
My phone camera beats any magnifying glass. Here are photos of some bugs I encountered on a California beach today. They were 1-5 mm long yet my camera captured them adequately. The background may look like pebbles it’s actually grains of sand.
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National Park Ideas
Here are some interesting ideas for new national parks by Ken Ilgunas.
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California Fires
Much of California has burned at some point. This map keeps track of historical wildfires.
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Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey held views that don’t align with our current political dimensions. He was an environmentalist, he was against immigration, he wanted people to have fewer children, he was pro-gun and as against economic growth. He also is one of my favorite writers, and one of the few miracles I’ve…
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Los Angeles
The first conference I went to after the pandemic of 2020-2021 was in Los Angeles. It was my first visit to the city. I had lived in California for almost a decade, been to UC Irvine, Joshua Tree and Palm Springs, but had never had a reason or a desire…
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Getting Spoiled
The more money you spend of travel, the higher your expectations. The higher your expectations, the more likely they are to be disappointed. Luxury travel – business class flights, five-star hotels, expensive restaurants – make you sensitive to the slightest perceived imperfection. David Foster Wallace, in A Supposedly Fun Thing…
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30 by 30
In 2016, Edward O. Wilson proposed that half of Earth‘s surface should be protected similar to a national park. In 2020, California governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order with the goal of protecting 30% of the state’s surface by 2030 (30 x 30). Given that we’re now halfway between…
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Miami Consul
To get my Austrian passport renewed, I needed to visit one of the consulates my native country maintains in America to hand over my documents. The closest one is in Los Angeles, but that’s a roundtrip airfare and a day’s worth of travel, and also, I don’t want to go…
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Hotel Room Monitors
Why don’t hotels provide workstations in their rooms? A good-sized monitor, a full keyboard and a mouse would suffice. If that doesn’t fit, have a desk on wheels that contains those items and that you can order up to your room, similar to the little trolleys they deliver room service…
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Unnecessary Backpacking Gear
There are lots of backpacking gear lists out there, and one day I may post mine. In the meantime, here is some backpacking gear I have considered and decided against:
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Kevin Kelly’s Travel Tips
Kevin Kelly’s travel tips are based on 50 years of experience. Below are my favorite ones; the common theme is that they make it easier to engage with the locals and go beyond typical tourist experiences. Organize your travel around passions instead of destinations. An itinerary based on obscure cheeses,…
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A Great Time to Be Large
I’d have loved to see Pleistocene megafauna like the mammoth with my own eyes, and maybe one day I will. In the meantime, I am happy in the knowledge that right now, I share the planet with both the largest animal and the largest plant that ever existed.
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The Sorcerer II
Around the time I was doing my PhD, J. Craig Venter was one of the most talked about scientists on the planet. At some point, he came to give a talk at my research lab and the lecture theatre was packed. Everyone knew about him, but not everyone liked him.…
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The Blue Boat
I recently came across the painting below. It beautifully captures what it’s like to paddle through a remote lake. A printout now hangs above my desk to remind me of canoe trips past and future.
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Go Ahead, Talk with Strangers
I don’t remember anyone ever telling me not to talk with strangers. As a result, I’ve never avoided it and it has been fine. In turn, I’ve never told any of my daughters to avoid strangers and I don’t intend doing so either. I believe that this sort of warning…
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Kolkata
A few years ago, I took a short trip to Kolkata to go to a wedding. I didn’t take any photos, but the trip is more vivid in my memory than most others I’ve taken. The airport was crowded, old and chaotic. My friend was picking me up but he…
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Travel Hesitancy
Whenever I have to catch an early flight and get up at 4 am, I wonder, why I’m doing this to myself? Why don’t I stay home, sleep in and read a book? The dread peaks as I brush my teeth, glancing at my phone every few seconds, wondering if…
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You Can’t See Them
This is a recent text by editing director of Alta Journal, Blaise Zerega: The summit at Heavenly Resort in Lake Tahoe is 10,067 feet up. Standing there atop the Sierra Nevada on a crisp, clear winter day, you’d swear you were gazing across not only the lake but the entirety of the…
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California: Great for Trees
Why does California have the tallest, biggest and oldest trees? Coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are the tallest trees on Earth, reaching 116 meters. Their range is coastal Northern California. Giant redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are the most massive trees on Earth, reaching 1,487 cubic meters. Their range is the Western slope…
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Money or All This
We’re spending the days between Christmas and New Year at a ranch house on the Eastern slope of Mt Shasta. There are no neighbors apart from two horses who show mild interest whenever the kids run to their enclosure, only to turn away in disappointment when it becomes clear that…
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Geocaching
Geocaching isn’t as popular as it used to be. Google Trends shows that interest peaked in 2011 and has been at 25% of the peak since then, with a downward trend. Doesn’t matter, lots of things have had more adherents in the past but are still just as good. If…
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Malmö
Crossing the Öresund Bridge that connects Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden, I knew a new part of my life was about to start. Most of the time, I recognize the transitions between phases in my life only retrospectively, but sometimes I’m aware as they happen. I had previously…
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Brixton
Emerging from Brixton tube station for the first time and stepping out into the street, I entered a world I hadn’t experienced before. It was loud, multiethnic and crowded but also drab like only London can be. Brixton market was in full swing, the fruit vendors were shouting, buses were…
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Mushrooms Making Waves
I believe this is turkey tail mushroom (Trametes versicolor). The water in the background is Bon Tempe Lake in Marin county, California.
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The Eight Mountains
What was my father longing for? He, who never managed to stop working. He barely made it to the mountains for a few weeks in summer This is from the movie The Eight Mountains (trailer here), which is based on a novel by Paolo Cognetti. I’ve been wondering about the…
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On Not Going Home
This essay by James Wood expresses something that I’ve been feeling myself for some time now. I left Austria when I was 18, and I’ve lived in England, Sweden, Germany and California since. I can go back to Austria at any time, but I can’t go home any longer. The…
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Yearning From Above
I’m on a plane. This morning, I woke up in a Sheraton hotel room and this afternoon I’ll be in a corporate office with a glass wall on one side, a white board with week-old diagrams in blue and green on the other, and my desk in between. Looking out…
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The Night is Darkening Round Me
The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow, And the storm is fast descending And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me,…
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What My Father Did Wrong
On my desk, I have a picture of my father together with a four year old girl. They both look at the camera. She’s not happy about having her picture taken in the way little girls sometimes are but my father looks more relaxed than on any other photo I…
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Spend it Wisely
Last week, my wife and I packed our kids into the car and drove four hours to a cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Early November is a good time to spend be there if it doesn’t rain. It didn’t, and on one of our walks we even saw a…
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The Overstory
The Overstory by Richard Powers is different from any novel I’ve ever read. It’s experimental in the sense that it is composed of multiple tangled stories, much like the canopy of a forest, which is appropriate since it’s a book about trees and how we relate to them. “A book…
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Outdoor Books
I don’t get to spend as much time as I’d like out of doors and try to make up for it by reading. Here are my favorite non-fiction outdoor books:
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Needle Ice
This is needle ice, which I observed growing out of the ground the morning of September 12th next to a backcountry lake in Yosemite National Park at 9,370 feet. More on the phenomenon here.
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Involuntary Explorers
I don’t find Jungian archetypes compelling, but if I did, I’d be drawn to the archetype of the Involuntary Explorer: Men who, due to events beyond their control, stranded in faraway lands, having adventures. A big part of the appeal is that the adventures are involuntary, which removes the suspicion…
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Insufficiently Fractal
I’ve just come back from a week of backpacking in the Sierra Nevada. The first day we got altitude sickness, by the second day my lips became so dry they cracked, we didn’t bring enough whiskey to last us beyond the third evening, by the fourth evening all we had…
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Oh I Am Sick of Brick and Stone
A wind’s in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels, I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels; I hunger for the sea’s edge, the limit of the land, Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand. Oh I’ll be going, leaving the noises…
Nehaveigur 