Untitled

Signpost Forest and time traveling epochs

Signpost Forest “Look! Up ahead there on the left.” Our navigation up our hometown’s narrow circuitous road, looking out over the redwoods into the adjoining town of Fairfax, had brought us to the green rectangular sign: San Anselmo. The year was 2001, and we were planning our first travels to Alaska to include just a tiny bit of civic disobedience. “How so?” you might ask. Simply the removal of…

A meeting with a remarkable corvid

A bird’s shrill, piercing scream erupts from the far side of our campground. This is not the call of a crow. The voicing is dark, dusky, raspy. Soon a dark shape glides from the shadows of the trees and lands on the grass of the children’s playground in front of me. This black bird is huge, with large head, eyes like black mirrors, feather tufts between its eyes draping down onto a thick beak.…

  Call of the bald eagle. When was the last time you watched a movie, or nature or wilderness program, and heard the call of, you assume, the majestic bald eagle? Nine times out of ten that call is the producer’s slight of hand, so to speak, as the eagle’s shrill whine just isn’t sexy enough for prime time. That dubbed call you hear falls to the red-tailed hawk. Any place with a significant body…

We arrive in Fairbanks, and soon modify our mode of transportation from our Silver Submarine to railroad tracks and Iditarod dog training sleds. We’re near the apex of our journey north, having taken a route circumscribing an area resembling a small drunken triangle in the bottom portion of a vast surrounding wilderness. As the raven flies, Fairbanks lies a tad over 600 miles from the…

Adaptation through natural selection

Trees migrate “What!?” you say. Wood is hard, slow growing, and rooted. Are trees sentient? Can they perceive and feel things? There is growing evidence that trees and plants have these characteristics, and are able to inform each other chemically—through soil at least—about environmental effects on a basic level. The below link is an 18-minute TED talk from a forest scientist on her research…

Crepuscular light and prospects of wonder

  Leaving Prince George, British Columbia, we followed Route 16, also known as the Yellowhead Highway, for about 395 miles along this massively long road running from Winnipeg, Manitoba to Haida Gwaii Island off the coast of Prince Rupert, BC. It’s about 1,777 miles all told (but who’s counting?). It was named after a fur trader and explorer, Pierre Bostonaise, who had yellow streaks in his…

Fraser River on Highway 97 and points north by northwest

Fraser River on Highway 97 Our first week traveling north in British Columbia has been spent along the Fraser River. At an overall distance of around 850 miles, it’s the longest river in the province, stretching the equivalent distance of one-third of the way across America. It takes its name from Simon Fraser, who led an expedition along it in 1808 for the North West Company, a fur trading…

Stardate 2001 A 21-years-younger us pulled into the queue before the Matanuska Ferry, operated by the Alaska Marine Highway System—the only highway that reaches many towns in the 49th State. We had reservations for our Toyota pickup, and a small berth for the four-day journey up the Inside Passage from Bellingham, Washington to Haines, Alaska. After being flagged on board the parking deck with a…

For those of you not familiar with Edwin Way Teale, he was a peripatetic naturalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who lived in the first half of the twentieth century, primarily known for his book series, The American Seasons. Edwin and his wife Nellie documented the changing seasons, flora, and fauna during their more than 75,000 miles of North American automotive travels. Ruth’s and my…

Announcing the publication of Ruth’s new book!

For those of you who remember the infamous dial tone, our blog postings have gone connectionless as we continue adventuring and dancing with the insatiable Muse of writing. Ruth’s feet have barely touched the ground during her latest pirouette, and from this dervish dance of delight has come her latest tale of the wandering kind:

Walking to Canterbury: A Five-Day Journey on the Pilgrims Way

  The…

Memoir musings around the campfire, part 3: Diving in

Sometimes life’s muse challenges us to get ahead of our story and create a deeper, more fulfilling path of travel. My old friend, Luke, called me one day from Wichita, Kansas, to ask if I would be interested in assuming his position as the YMCA health club assistant director and lead masseur to a team of homeopathic physicians. It was exciting being in the emergency response world, and the key…

Memoir musings around the fire, Part 2

Hearing Death’s knock

It was a typical paramedic drive day, if that’s possible, on the streets of Birmingham. A call came to us from our station telling us we needed to roll to the scene of a cardiac arrest in an apartment complex; the fire department had just arrived. When we got there, I quickly saw that the apartment was on the second floor—and the surrounding scene was chaotic: firefighters…

Memoir musings around the fire, Part 1

I’m reminded that travel contains, between the lines of now and then, compressed memories and highlights that remained pinned like banners across life’s parade route.

While trading stories around our campfire with newfound nomadic friends, I recalled a hot summer 1972 day in Birmingham, Alabama, walking the streets, job hunting. How I got there is, well, another story. I found myself in a…

Wheels to rails to the horizon

We are no strangers to train travel. Distant echoes of the great Pullman era have beckoned us in years past to explore diverse long-distance routes. Once again that shimmering seductress enticed us with her song of the rails. There is something special even today, about the kinesthetic bio-feedback which only a train can impart, the rhythmic clack and click of wheels across rail joints and ties.…

The Pilgrim Trail: London to Canterbury, Part 2

Day One: London to Rochester (29 miles)

We started our pilgrimage in Bankside, at the site of the Tabard Inn, where Chaucer set the opening of his Canterbury Tales. Unfortunately, the Tabard Inn was one of those ancient inns that was demolished in earlier centuries, but the site is commemorated, and here we marked the “official” start of our walk.

632 (and a half) years later

Our small backpacks…

The Pilgrim Trail: Traveling in time, five days from Shakespeare to Chaucer

Part One

Ever since I read about the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the hands of four of King Henry II’s knights, I’ve been intrigued by the story. These two powerful men, one a king, one an archbishop, were best of friends—bosom buddies, in fact—and yet, thanks to politics and religion, they ended up at odds. Fed up with what he perceived as Becket’s intransigence for putting the church…