Blog
Untethered as the Birds: Zip Lining in the Smoky Mountains
I feel giddy as they lead us higher, higher, higher into the sky, leaving the lush green trees that once surrounded us at our feet, and at the feet of the rugged blue peaks I now spot in the distance, shrouded in wisps of fog. The most biodiverse National Park in the United States, the Smoky Mountains smell of mist, clay, and clouds. I inhale the trees’ breath and relish the tingle of minuscule rain droplets that litter my skin, no longer fighting the inevitable merging of my once-clean body with Earth’s fingerprints.
A Stormy Night Upon The Porch
My dirty bare feet are curled beneath me on a mildly damp patio bench. The porch shelters me from the night storm, but exposes me just enough that my arms are sprinkled with water. In a nearby pond, a duet of rippling chirps is sung back and forth between two frogs. They are hidden by the blackened sky until it is split by purple lighting.
Window To The Sky: Arches National Park
The postcards do not show the smooth crater like a black hole threatening to suck the arch away into the center of the earth; nor the breathtaking and treacherous view beyond its keyhole. A rounded frame, it holds within itself the desert’s deadly beauty, which—akin to Galadriel in Lord of the Rings—bellows, “All will love me and despair!” My awe is tempered by caution as the empty deadness warns us of what we’ll become should we get lost or misstep.
A Grove In A Graveyard: Capitol Reef National Park
Travelers named this desert Capitol Reef before they’d known water once dwelt there. As we drive between the towering red cliffs that once barred ancient wanderers passage, I imagine marine wildlife swimming alongside us through the mummified ocean. Our campsite lies nestled against lush fruit orchards planted by Mormon settlers—an unexpected oasis amid the scorched, dry land; a grove in a graveyard. I smile at the familiar agricultural sight, as a horse trots picturesquely around the pioneers’ historic barn—so out of place against the copper desert backdrop.
Bryce Canyon Trail Ride
We descend into the spindles, gradually transforming what seemed a distant painting into walls that tower over us. At every turn, we discover new castles, monuments, windows, and valleys, all reaching their blood-orange fingertips toward the periwinkle sky. Can we really be just miles from where we started? For I feel as though I’ve been transported to Mars.
A Mortal Among Seraphim: Hiking Angel's Landing in Zion National Park
The hot desert sun and thin mountain air have made good on their reputations long before we’ve even reached the base of the fin-like formation that juts 1,500 feet out of the canyon. I gasp for breath and wipe sweat from my brow, trying not to think about the sign we pass that warns me not to be the fourteenth fall since 2004.
There’s Something About Zion
There’s something about Zion National Park. It is the something that I saw in your eyes, glazed over with longing. Something that hugged your heart like the comfort of a mother’s bosom and whispered, return to me. I didn’t understand it, until she embraced me herself. Now I know.
Fossilized in Time: Petrified Forest National Park
We hike a jet black trail into “Blue Mesa,” eroded hills layered in shades of muted mulberry and maroon, lined with vein-like cracks. Now, surrounded by dunes, all is quiet. You take my hand as we wind down switchbacks between the smooth-sided slopes, whose creases hold glittering fragments of petrified wood that wink at us like jewels in a mine.
Chasing Ghosts on Skyline Drive to Shenandoah National Park
I drive alone on black roads coiling like a snake ‘round misty blue mountains, rendered flat by haze, with nothing and no one for company but the blissful expanse of nature. I emerge from my parked vessel to stand in the middle of it and stare down a long, echoing tunnel that splits the cliff, tempting fate as the tremendous roar of an oncoming car reaches my ears. As I sprint to safety, the sound fades into the distant calls of crows and miniature waterfalls trickling down the mountain’s face.
Florida Fishermen
A hazy fog has settled upon the endless line of ocean, chasing away the bikini-clad tourists and leaving only fishermen; the same fishermen, who appear like dew upon the rocks every morning before anyone can wake up to see how they got there. A light drizzle patters against the yellow raincoat of one. Five men cast their lines from every corner of their boat by a post in the bay, the same spot they fished yesterday; and I marvel that the aquatic occupants there haven’t learned to find alternative residence yet.
Shipwrecks of Lake Superior
I lean against the railing and watch the transparent floor below me with bated breath. Bubbles settle like washing machine suds against the glass, and I tip a little on my sea legs. Veins of sunlight penetrate the turquoise deep. Then, suddenly, the curved bow of a ship slices into view: a ship directly below our own. She drowned, frozen in a moment of tragic time, her pain preserved to indulge the morbid curiosity of my eyes.
Feeding Trout at Horseshoe Falls
We cross the creek on a pretty array of pedestrian bridges beneath tree branch archways, and I feel the temperature change as we leave the trickling falls. Their fresh smell lingers, and I can taste icy cold droplets in the air. As the sound of the waterfall dissipates, it is replaced by the melodic splashing of a nearby water mill. It draws us deeper into the diverse garden community, where there live sweet-smelling apple trees, paper birches, weeping willows, purple-leaved ferns, and pine trees with long draping arms that reach for the water of a pond filled with rainbow trout.
Water & Color: Pictured Rocks Kayak Tour
We pass a series of giant pockets hewn from the side of the cliffs by ages of water erosion, creating the appearance of Swiss cheese. Water gurgles, erupts, sloshes, and spurts as waves push white bubbles in and out of the holes. The slapping surf echoes in a sound like animal-skin drums as the wave’s wax turns to wane.
From Tree to Cobbler: Cherry Picking in Door County
In the Northeast of Wisconsin, where cheese squeaks and the beaches are free of salt or sharks, lies a peninsula called Door County. I’ve had my fill of wine tastings when my boyfriend, his parents, and I venture to a cherry orchard planted between green hills graced with flocks of black and white cows.
Another Summer at Lake Wallenpaupack, PA
Baby fish begin leaping to catch a net of bugs that hover just above the water’s surface, and when they fall it looks like rain. Their silver bellies catch the light in paparazzi flashes about me. They do this at the same time every year—just like the baby toads that hop across the beach, and the tiger swallowtail butterflies, punctually filling the lake bushes with their delicate yellow wings each summer.
A Taste of Rivendell: Watkins Glen State Park, NY
The serpent ravine bloats and shrinks in billowing pockets hollowed out of the rock by years of erosion, smooth as the sugar of a well-licked lollipop. Each bowl is filled with emerald green pools caked with foam. Clattering echoes bounce between them amid the distant roar of rushing waves as I peer over the treacherous rim.
A Walk in the French Quarter, New Orleans, LA
We follow the sticky-sweet powdered-sugar smell of beignets through overhanging Spanish moss, draping like abandoned sage curtains over the limbs of knobby, bayou trees: out of place among the urban landscape. French and Spanish architecture transports me to another time as our path opens up and we are on a courtyard of stone, overlooking Jackson Square.