Carrauntoohil – Ireland’s High Point Ireland’s western coast is strewn with fantastic mountains. The southwestern tip of the island contains the famous Ring of Kerry, a loop that tours the Iveragh Peninsula of County Kerry. This region is a quintessentially Irish mix of rock and green. The mountains and the sea intersect in a sensory delight. Nestled […]
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Tree Speak and the Wood Wide Web Traditionally, we have viewed trees as individuals, stoic as they compete for sunlight, survive storms, and slowly grow from tiny seeds to monstrous sentinels. This viewpoint is human, a sort of anthropomorphized version of a natural-resource economy or a misunderstanding of Darwinism. Only the strong trees endure, as they
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Forrest Fenn’s Treasure A human named Forrest Fenn flew 328 combat missions in 365 days during the Vietnam War. Twice he was shot down. His experiences earned him a Silver Star. When Fenn left the military, he ended up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he eventually established an art gallery that turned into a multi-million-dollar
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Old Whitey Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve occupies 4,300 square miles of Lake Huron on the northern half of Michigan’s southern peninsula. This zone was the 13th area to be protected in American waters but the first in the Great Lakes. As you might gather from a name such as Thunder Bay,
Wanda Risen “I don’t seek death, but I don’t mind if it happens in the mountains. It would be an easy death for me. Many of my friends are waiting for me in the mountains.” –Wanda Rutkiewicz Many alpine historians consider a slight Polish climber to be the greatest woman mountaineer ever born. Standing just 5 feet,
Sakura If one should ask you concerning the spirit of a true Japanese, point to the wild cherry blossom shining in the morning sun. –Motoori Norinaga, Shikishima no Uta Since at least the 8th century, people in Japan have practiced hanami, which translates literally to “flower viewing.” The flower in question is the sakura, also known as
Firefall It is 3,000 feet to the bottomAnd no undertaker to meet youTAKE NO CHANCESThere is a differenceBetween bravery and just plainORDINARY FOOLISHNESS In the late 1860s and early 1870s, Yosemite Valley was vastly different than it is today. Its status as a protected National Park stood decades in the future. People actually lived amongst
Yosemitebear One of the great phenomena we have the blessing to experience as entities in a physical reality is one we tend to treat with familiarity because it is fairly common. Like the glory of a sunrise or sunset, upon which one could gaze two times every living day, rainbows are a marvel of physics
Guadalupe Peak Redux – Texas’ High Point Around 300 million years ago, western Texas and southeastern New Mexico were covered by an inland sea, called the Delaware Basin. Over time, a reef developed around the edge of the water. In these systems, calcium carbonate from organisms with shells forms limestone rock. Sometime during the Cenozoic
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Trinity Batter my heart, three-person’d God — John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. — Vishnu, Bhagavad Gita In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered the possibility of nuclear fission. Physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch realized the breakdown of radioactive elements could produce a weapon of planetary proportions.