My face is pressed into broken chunks of white marble, my arms spread eagled as a light breeze reminds me of what I already know. I focus on slow calm breaths. My fear of heights is a reasonable fear of falling great distances, but it’s inconvenient when climbing mountains. I should have remembered that hiking in Europe generally involves sections which would be considered madness in the US. Of course I love everything about this, just not in this exact moment.

I am sleeping under mosquito netting on a real bed, much to my surprise, with my knife and cell phone by my head, though neither will do much good. The small village near the Sudan border in Uganda was the site of one of many refugee camps during the violence of the LRA in the 90s.

I arrive in Tofo (pronounced Tofu), Mozambique on the heels of a moderate cyclone which knocked over some palm huts, redistributed beach sand across the lower elevation streets of the peninsula and left behind a good swell. The breeze in the air keeps the intense humidity on the move and after weeks of working in northern Uganda and on the Zimbabwe border my goals are simple. I want to get into the Indian Ocean, to do as little as possible while eating fresh food in the shade, and to swim with giants. (More on that later.) Tofo fits the bill perfectly.

Three days into the Arkhangai region and it feels as if I have never been warm or clean. The landscape is impossibly stunning, but freezing rain pauses intermittently for snow. Or for brief moments to allow God rays to break through heavy bruised cloud, casting beams of golden light onto green mountain valleys cropped short by the wooly yaks that dot them.

“We have no brakes.” 

“Very funny.”

“No, I’m serious. We have no brakes.” He repeats calmly, but urgently. My friend and guide Baataraa is easy going and always making jokes. I imagine this is yet another as we are at the top of a steep road with a long winding descent, a grassy valley spread out below us.

I feel like these are the first deep breaths I have ever taken, as if I have been searching for this, thirsting for this my whole life. The sense of relief is amazing.

Maybe it’s the freedom of living under an immense unbroken sky, feeling as if I can sense the arc of the sky as it stretches out around me, the rotation of the planet throughout the day. Or the profound silence which allows me to tune in to nature of, which I am a part, undisturbed by man-made noise.

A tour of the Explorers Club courtesy of Huckberry.

I find packing to be one of the most difficult parts of an expedition. This is partly because of all the complex and critical items one must bring as a photographer, but also because of the gear and clothing needed to be comfortable when doing my job in far flung places. I worry about forgetting things and I worry about bringing too much…

Portillo, Chile has been a travel destination since steam trains brought tourists high into the Andes in the late 1800’s. The bright yellow hotel, sitting close to the Argentine border crossing, has seen ski history unfold as early ski legends like Stein Erickson then Warren Miller, all the great national ski teams, and big mountain royalty, as well as regular guests, come to ski and enjoy the unique camaraderie of the remote location.

I had the opportunity to go to the Bowdoin Kent Island Scientific Station in New Brunswick Canada as an Artist in Residence. I was a Bowdoin College student years ago, but didn’t have the opportunity to visit Kent as biology was not my wheelhouse. But the Artist Residency has opened up opportunities for more to experience this magical place.

Images from a winter trip into the far reaches of Yellowstone National Park to backcountry ski in the Lamar Valley.

Sao Miguel is the largest and most populous island of the Azores covering 290 square miles and 140,000 citizens, relative to outer islands which can have only a few thousand. The island is composed on two volcanic massifs, and has many calderas, lakes, caverns, and hot springs to explore. While there are natural wonders to explore, Sao Miguel also has many cultural highlights as well, I visited beaches and art openings, museums and restaurants and barely scratched the surface and hope to return.

I am partial to small remote places, so Graciosa was a delight. When I landed at the airport, there was no evidence of taxis, so an islander picking up her aunt from California gave me a lift into town. They told me stories of Graciosa of many years ago before tourists started coming. The largest town of Santa Cruz da Graciosa is a beautiful, whitewashed town strung along a seawall and wrapped around a sleepy town square.

Terceira interested me largely because of Angra do Heroismo, which is a UNESCO World Heritage City, as it was a key hub for global sailing vessels in the Golden Age of Exploration. Paved with mosaic cobbles of black and white lava rock surrounding a beautiful and well-fortified harbor full of multi colored fish, the city does not disappoint.

The Azores are an autonomous region of Portugal, made up of 9 volcanic islands located in the mid-Atlantic.
I visited in the fall of 2022 flying into Terceira (site of a Unesco World heritage port city Angra do Heroismo), then on to Graciosa (the second smallest island,) then to Faial and lastly the largest island in the archipelago, Sao Miguel. What islands you will like best really depend on what you are looking to do, and everyone has their own favorites. But if you like nature and good food you will like all the islands.

All the news fit to print, Radio Kerry

The first week at Cill Rialaig, I so was overwhelmed by the freedom, the silence, the pressure of possibility and my own aspirations for my work that I sort of wasted it in the entirety.

Staying at Kilreelig Village (spelled many different ways) is an antidote to our times. I hit my limit in January, the stressor overload simply too much from the years before covid, covid itself, the climate, the long overdue racial reckoning, and now the crisis in Ukraine.

Yesterday I started off, driving over the mountains behind my house to St Finian’s Bay and the again over the next and on to Portmagee, the two sets of mountains making up the outer reaches of the on the Skellig Peninsula where I am living.

Although I have been heading out to southwestern Montana every winter to ski for more than a decade, and most of my family has relocated there, my summer visits are rarer. And therefore very special.