Posted by Being a “Digital Nomad” means that my office changes constantly. Some days I’m uploading from a hotel in China, at other times I work straight from my backpack up on the highest mountains. Wherever it is, though, I can always count on something thrilling happening right beyond my desk. For this past week in the…
When Darwin camped in Galápagos back in 1835, the young British traveler found it difficult to pitch a tent given the incredible number of iguanas and their burrows. Nowadays, there are fewer lizards crawling around the islands, but there are still colonies where the lava rock is literally blanketed in iguanas. Climbing so closely to…
Galápagos is a strange and wonderful world that becomes stranger to me by the hour. The penguins swim in tropical waters, some of the birds have bright blue feet, and others can’t even fly. Even more bizarre is that some of the seabirds don’t even swim. The frigatebird is such a bird—large, magnificent and with…
Like witches, cameras fear water. I know this because I have killed several (three?) very expensive cameras by taking them to the far ends of the Earth and then using them in a light drizzle. There were no survivors. Aware of my own less-than-fatherly track record, I took special precautions with my new Nikon D600.…
Ladies and Gentlemen, for this next assignment, I will be breaking all of my own rules. Those of you who follow my travels regularly know that I a man of habit. For example, 1) I never divulge my destination or travel plans ahead of time, 2) I always work alone, and 3) I typically travel…
Bruce is a real cowboy. He has a ranch with horses and a big American flag flying out front, and he has a guitar and he knows how to play it. I met Bruce Anfinson on a sleigh ride up at Lone Mountain Ranch near Big Sky, Montana. A full moon shone through the forest…
Don’t tell me what a place is like—just show me the food. Good food reveals a lot about any destination and nowhere is that more true than good ol’ Montana. Driving from the top of the state down to its southernmost corner, I discovered Montana’s wintertime cuisine has as much heart as the sky is…
It began snowing sideways after midnight, and by dawn, the world was even whiter than the day before. Two inches of new snow lay on the ground, slopped upon the roofs and trees and mailboxes—even the dogs in the street shook their snowy dreadlocked fur and then playfully tumbled back into the drifts. My own…
Sixty-six below zero. That’s the coldest temperature ever recorded in Yellowstone: -66ºF at Madison, near the park’s west entrance at West Yellowstone, Montana. How cold is that? Cold enough to break the thermometer that made the measurement back in 1933. It was fitting then, that we should stop at this momentous site for a break…
Never judge a town by its exit ramp . . . . . . because at night, every exit looks the same: fast food beacons and glowing gas stations with trucks steaming in the cold. I spin away from the dark rush of the interstate and down the town’s widest avenue—to the snow-crusted parking lot…
Like people or the movies, snow can be good—or it can be bad.
Bad snow is deceiving: hard and crusty on top yet soft and air-pocked underneath. Bad snow doesn’t hold up under pressure—it breaks apart and shifts and slides. Bad snow causes avalanches.
It’s like riding a bike! This is what everyone says about skiing—that once you learn, you can just jump back on the slopes and swoop down like a champ. I’m not so sure—and I don’t love the comparison. When you learn to ride a bike, you get to have training wheels, and should you fall,…
The Canadians are coming. They’ve invaded America and are taking over our towns and cities one by one. The tiny town of Whitefish, Montana is simply crawling with Canucks. They zip across the 49th parallel to buy up our cheap(er) gas and groceries, and to subvert our peaceful American way of life through seemingly-innocuous cross-border…
I love toponyms (place names), because they reveal so much—and yet so little—about the places they are meant to typify. It was snowing in Minneapolis (Sioux Mni = “water”; Greek polis = “city”) when I boarded a flight for Kalispell, and briefly imagined that Kalispell was the name of some flaxen-haired, rose-lipped pioneer beauty in…
Gale force winds and short skirts don’t mix, but I took the risk all the same. My aim was the great and imposing Scottish mountain called Ben Nevis–the highest point in the United Kingdom (4,409′ ft, 1,344 m). As for wearing a kilt, well, when in Scotland . . . True kilts are made of…
Shetland may just be the most photogenic corner of Britain–the weather is moody and dramatic and the light (if it’s there) is always surprising and cinematic. Though I travel with several different cameras, it’s my phone I grab first–always. Phones may never compete with DSLR for clarity, stabilityf and megapixels, but I find phone pics…
“You’ve come at the wrong time.” This is what everyone tells me. They don’t say, “Welcome to Shetland!” Instead they say, “It’s such a pity you came right now, in January.” Then, like an answering machine instructing you to call back later, they tell me to come back in summer. Some insist that June is…
All libraries smell the same—the smell of very old paper and canvas, old carpet, old air. It’s the smell of old milk and the scent of history and like a hound sniffing the air, I followed the trail to the domed research room inside Scotland’s National Archives. Genealogy is nothing more than serious detective work.…
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. Robert Louis Stevenson penned that lined back in 1881 (Virginibus Puerisque) and as I drive east on Scotland’s A1—in the hopeful direction of the Scottish author’s boyhood vacation home—I am following his wise counsel. I never actually arrive at his home—the one rented in summertime…
It smelled like bacon. I was afraid to say it out loud, though—I doubt any real food and drink connoisseurs compare the smell of some grand old Scotch to an everyday pork product, but that’s what my nose captured. In the heart of Edinburgh, in a room walled with brass- and bronze-colored bottles, I sniffed…
New Year’s Day is a strange holiday, with fewer fixed traditions than most. It seems that January 1st is a kind of “anything goes” festival where people celebrate the start of a new year in whatever way they deem best. In my country, so many tend to lounge around at home and watch football, but…
High above Iceland the man began screaming uncontrollably, “Save me! Save me!” It wasn’t his shouting that jolted me from my transatlantic midnight rest, but the sound of total fear in his voice. I quickly sat up, checked my seatbelt, and then turned around to catch the panic on his face. “Make it stop, make…
Well, my dear friends, it has been one absolutely incredibly full year of intense round-the-world travel. As you may recall, I jumped into 2012 by venturing to southernmost Mexico and retracing the history of the Mayan calendar in anticipation of the final day in the final year of year of their final baktun. All year…
Wandering Tanzania’s national parks for an entire month taught me many things—like how to stay very quiet and still when there’s a 7-ton elephant rubbing against your tent. In all my travels in all the world, I have never had such rich and fulfilling wildlife encounters as I did in Tanzania, which is why I…
I walk through the uphill dust of an ancient explosion. My boots crunch into the slope in rhythm, worn rubber upon stones and sand, and in my head, I imagine the mighty boom that formed this mountain before me. I have walked five days to get to this point—through leafy forests jumping with monkeys, then…
