The little island of Valsörarna in the middle of the Gulf of Bothnia feels like it is 1,000 miles from anywhere. The Finnish mainland lies to the east, but when I was there on a hot August day, it was just out of view behind a thin bank of clouds. West, towards Sweden, blue water sloshed lazily, bathtub-like. Read >>

When I was a kid I had , for some reason, the following quote from the Czech historian Konstantin Jireček written on the back of my door:
“We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.” Read >>

Most visitors peek into the towering masonry ruins of Mesa Verde National Park and imagine a society on the edge. Not Ernie Atencio.The 60-year-old Colorado native and anthropologist spent several of his formative years working in the park’s backcountry and most of his life exploring the Four Corners region of the American southwest, arguably the richest archaeological area in North America. Read >>

On a breezy late-June morning, Tom Kennedy, the Director of the Zuni Tourism Program at the remote western New Mexico Native American pueblo stands atop the remains of the ancient Zuni town of Hawikku, about twelve miles southwest of the main Zuni village of Halona. The wind is gritty and the sky tinted orange from the dust; a Lesser earless lizard races across his feet. Read >>

Tyson Nequatewa and Alfred Poncho sit outside the Visitor’s Center. Nequatewa is a soft-spoken man with glasses and many little tattoos up and down his arms and on his small hands. Alfred is his opposite, massive and bear-like with huge dark hands. Both artists set up their work on tables under a shaded overhang built by the tourism office. Read >>

The island of Sandhornøya sits near the mouth of the Saltstarumen Sound in the far north of Norway. The shape of a squished heart stabbing into the Norwegian Sea, Sandhornøya is a wild and craggy rock guarding the entrance to some of the dramatic fjords that cut deep into the Arctic Coast. Back in the boulders and there in the few copses of trees that could get a hold on life that close to the Arctic once lived the huldrafolk or hidden people. Read >>

I nearly got myself run over by a 150 year old train a few years ago. It was a woman’s fault. Kind of. Ok well, not really. But kind of. Ok. Not really…. I guess it was really my fault. I walked out of Chama, New Mexico with a small backpack and the book titled “Blood Meridian”. I set camp up in the pines and aspens during a rain storm. My sleeping bag was soaked through. Dinner was beef jerky, M&Ms and the book. Read >>