I asked, and I was given.
I begged for all, but did not take You in.
Thus I sprang forth, but anon withered away.
I howled aloud from whence I thought I saw –
But my words laid bare my blindness.
When September Ends
A year ago today, friends and family, a partner and a mother lost someone close to their hearts. Neil Chastain passed on September 22, 2021, a date that coincided with the Autumnal Equinox. Known for the light of its days, an equinox is recognized as one of two times each year when both hemispheres of…
Are You Awake?
A light beams bright into your eyes. You cry. As air fills, chills run up your spine. Supine, into their loving arms you’re folded. The coldness comes unrecognized, but fades as he and she regard your face. Your tears, a first, and theirs for you as two embrace the moment… …Are you awake? The quiet…
No Guarantees
Continued from Where the Buffalo Roam: As Mel and I made our way to the trailhead leading to camp and dusk began our fourth night in the canyon, the wind sent thick clouds of dust swirling around us. We didn’t know it at the time, but Mountain Cedar season and the cotton harvest were both…
Where the Buffalo Roam
I’ve always hoped I’d do whatever it takes to protect myself and those around me when faced with a fearful or threatening situation, but how would I really know? Its not every day we have the opportunity to evaluate our limits, but on a recent trek in Caprock Canyon Mel and I were given that…
Tex-Mex
Outside of mission trips when Mel was young and some layovers traveling to and from Peru neither of us had spent a significant amount of time in Mexico, so when our good friend Roberto was getting hitched we didn’t miss our chance. Roberto scooped us up when we arrived in his home town of Puebla….
Hasta Luego, Not Goodbye.
It was three years ago that Matt and I landed in Bogota with two bikes and 8 panniers, a longing for discomfort and a life less ordinary. So began our Colombian bicycle tour which morphed into a South American living situation punctuated by trekking adventures amidst crumbling ruins, pristine glaciers, and sacred mountains; living in…
Death of an Empire
Death Of An Empire – East of Eden lies a city sprawling to the moon-soaked shores of Mariana. Bound there within its deepest chamber calls the keeper of arcana. Her chorus rises above horizons through billows heralding oblivion; Looming clouds of ash in dim-lit skies growing darker than obsidian. On granite walls they cast a…
I AM
In case you were wondering just how big my ego has gotten these days, this poem is not about me. It describes God through ideas put forth in the Bible. As a child raised in a Christian family I was exposed to many concepts that in retrospect I didn’t understand, and some of which, in all honesty, I still don’t. God is a great example of a concept likely incapable of being understood. In fact, if someone says they know what God is, they are likely confusing what it is to actually know something. Within our limited frame of reference it is quite nearly impossible to fathom a subject that is at once omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, irreproachable, and eternal. Just take the latter and attempt to grasp its implications beyond a figure eight. – Eternal is not before and after time, it is outside of time. It is timeless; nonlinear, which implies a frame of reference within everything has already happened, all things are happening at once, or there are innumerable and known quantum potentials unfolding concurrently, etc.
Mi Familia
This year is a time of true joy and abundance for my family. Both of my nephews were married within two days of each other, one of them had a beautiful baby girl, my oldest sister and niece both moved into a new home, my middle sister is about to pop out another kid, and…
Rainbow Mountain
We woke to a landscape covered in snow, the frozen ground and all signs of life hidden beneath a layer of white powder. Due to the acute change in weather, we would delay our start on what was planned to be the final morning of our journey to the colorful Vinicunca. We packed the tent around…
Gotta Get Up To Get Down
Like the low rumbling of thunder after a sustained lightning strike, we woke to the sound of ice separating from Ausungate’s shelf, dispersing like shattered glass into a glacial depression filled with milky turquoise which fed into the hidden depths of the great lake before us. We quickly took to packing the site and refilling…
Hail to Upis
Just before dawn we tromped drowsily down to Plazoleta San Blas which was all but deserted at this early hour and hailed a cab to an obscure station where we would board a public bus for the Oncongate region of Peru. It was 5:55 am when we broke away from the terminal, our transport virtually…
City in the Clouds
For the longest time Machu Picchu was a place we felt drawn to, and it seems other locations around the globe have a similar sort of magnetism. This is evidenced, as the poem describes, in the fact that we find ourselves wont to create and check-off lists of such locations and experiences. Why do we feel drawn in such a way? Is it simply a human trait to seek out the novel? Is it some underlying desire to connect with the history of a place or people once existing? Is the draw not actually external, but rather a quality projected outward onto objects in order to validate some deeper sense of longing? Might it be that we are all driven to wonder what lies beyond our little bubble in space and time for a purpose?
The Constructs
Cradled at the intersection of two jagged peaks blanketed by dense forest and fog, and almost encircled by the formidable Rio Urabamba, Machu Picchu remained hidden from the Spanish during their conquest of the area, and from modern civilization until around the turn of the 20th century. Despite attempts to paint a pretty picture of its construction as entirely credited to the Inca some 500 years earlier, the comprehensive story of the city’s origins remains veiled in mystery; a phenomena afflicting much of the ancient world.
Machu Picchu
Today we would finally step foot within the walls of Machu Picchu, and while this would be the first time, it would not be the last. Soon after the trip with Kristi we returned with friends and family from the States, Rachel (Melissa’s sister) and Ahren. In order to access the ruins on both occasions we had to go…
The Road to Ruins
We woke a little early and a little groggy after day 1 to begin our exploration of an already bustling Ollantaytambo. Taking in the manicured main square for a moment after breakfast led us to believe Ollay was no different than any number of small villages in the Sacred Valley; heavily propped up by tourism…
Olé Ollay
During our bike tour and on various treks we’ve noticed more and more women adventuring alone. Honestly, I think we’ve seen a preponderance of solo girls compared to guys along the way. In either case, it’s awesome that people are making adventure happen no matter the circumstances. On that note, after a tour of Banff, Canada our friend Kristi made a…
The Dream
Sometime during the seventh night of our trek through the Andes after Mel and I drifted to sleep a dream from earlier in the journey returned to my awareness.
Homeward Bound
Wake up, eat up, pack up – all part of the routine – every step of which became increasingly difficult to accomplish after our attention was taken. Crawling out of our nylon nest now dripping with dew, we lifted dreary eyes across the valley as a rolling fog unveiled the fabled City in the Clouds,…
Hike to High Town
We woke to a morning marking one week in the Andes cradled by a dense cushion of grass that rivaled the most luxurious pillow-top, and treated ourselves to showers before heading through the streets of La Playa. The rumors which painted the town a drab and dusty brown had not unfairly exaggerated its condition. We…
The Rarest Thing
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.” -Oscar Wilde Day 6, 11/26/16 And on this day, we lived, if only for a moment. Today began as an ordinary day on the trail, but would unfold to reveal hidden weaknesses, unexpected triumphs, and heights previously unimagined. I don’t speak of…
Giving Gracias
After the best sleep we had thus far we woke to the sound of small streams flanking our camp feeding into a river that rushed white through the center of the Great Valley. For any doubters, Mel could be seen carrying out the cooking AND cleaning duties this Thanksgiving morning giving me reason to be…
Abras and Abrigos
The ground spilled out far before me a deepening blue. Over the horizon hung a pale and hallowed moon casting a shimmering luminescence onto edges of objects within view. Slender blades curling softly into spirals grew before me, surrounding me. The night sky was black, and there was only silence. I was alone, and I did not…
The Take At The Lake
As expected, the morning of day three was a cold one. We sluggishly woke to a frost covered ground and started to prepare breakfast, eventually noticing that two of the three trekking poles we had stored in our vestibule were missing. We immediately set out to blame the large squirrel-like rodents seen romping around the…
Lago Humantay
Mel and I commenced dia dos later than expected after shaking off the long hike which had swiftly settled into our joints and muscles. The once plush landing where we made our camp the previous night had hardened to frozen tundra as we tossed and turned, punctuating the importance of the missing mats. We woke,…
The Way to Salkantay
The beginning: Cusco to Marco Casa In search of an adventure to highlight our Thanksgiving holiday, Mel and I stumbled upon some information regarding a trek interlacing the glacier-laden Andes of Peru and the low lying jungles near the foot of Machu Picchu. Due to it’s proximity to our home base, and the fact that…
Year One
A lot has happened in the last 12 months and it all started with a trekking tour of the Grand Canyon in March of last year made possible by our friend Sarah (Thank you Sarah!). The trip spurred on our adventurous spirits and dreams of a life lived a little differently. The vast scale and awe-inspiring presence of the canyon practically forced our decision to take a leap of faith toward filling our days with such beauty and experience.
A Place to Call Home
The trip from Nasca to Cusco was set to unfold over 12 darkened hours on an ever ascending mountain pass through the Andes. In the name of adventure we took our chances, but because even the most steadfast mountain sometimes crumbles and even the most well planned journey cannot fully be controlled, a series…
A Line in the Sand
After a little over two weeks living it up in Lima we made our way south along the coast through townships and territories flanked by dry desert and balmy beaches, to Nasca, a small city known for giant geoglyphs of ancient origin. You may be familiar with the Nasca Lines for their depiction of insects…
Próxima Lima
While Mel was in DC Felipe and I checked out some corners of Bogota we had yet to see, one of which was an industrial section filled with literally hundreds of small manufacturing shops. Wood and metal workers, offset printers, upholstery and textile producers; all able to fulfill small to large production runs, even one-off…
Finding Feria – Pereira to Manizales
We turned over the new year in Pereira, a town known to be the business end of the coffee region in more ways than one. It is home to both a large segment of industry and corporations from the area, and unfortunately – or fortunately I suppose, depending on one’s proclivities – an abnormally…
An Ode to Arabica
Emanating from somewhere deep within the heart of Colombia there is a force, like that of a gigantic magnet, with a pull so strong it attracts weekend wanderers from every corner of the globe, yet so subtle that often a brief visit turns to weeks and even years of time away from the places they…
Un Momento en Salento
From the lowlands of La Pintada we climbed to Manizales, Pereira, and finally to Salento, a small mountain town serendipitously situated at the heart of coffee country and just minutes away from Valle de Cocora, both draws for Lonely Planet perusing peso passing tourists, and for good reason; this region is almost magical. Everywhere you…
Highway Companions – Part 2
Continued… Drained of energy and heavy with rain, we felt as if our shoes and bags were made of lead. It was all we could do to push our bikes upward and pray that the peak would come soon. Fortunately, the series of events that would unravel next would turn this day around. The…
Highway Companions – Part 1
It was the best of times, it was the worst… Day 15-16 Thankful for the city shade we guided our bikes southerly, planning for the first time to traverse the Pan-American Highway, a route most often touted by traveling bike tourists. We left Medellín in our rearview, and hit the open road which in this…
Maybe Medellín
While riding through Punta de Llano, Santa Sofía, Moniquirá, and Barbosa we were warned by locals regarding a potential conflict area and about a section that could present issues for our travels en bici, or on bike. In response, we decided to hop a bus near the base of some of the most considerable mountains…
Villa de Leyva
Paving the way to the center of this enchanting village were roads of large cobblestone distressed to varying shades of mocha over five hundred years of exposure and patronage. With bikes bumping and bags banging we pushed our way to the “largest plaza in Colombia,” Plaza Mayor. Gazing outward from its center felt as if…
Canción del Camino
After exploring Ráquira (translated city of pots), the terra cotta Capitol of Colombia whose history is depicted with larger than life earthen figures in the town square, we started down a road the same reddish-brown, its potholes leveled with the remains of fractured bowls and vases, toward Villa de Leyva. The route brought us through…
Night Ride to Ráquira
In Ubate we camped, but not in an area designated “Zona de Acampar,” not a farmer’s field, not down a secluded path far from the main road; no, we set up our big yellow tent in the town square right next to a children’s playground within sight of restaurants, a casino, a couple bars, and…
The Way to Ubaté
Today I saw life and today I saw death. Day 5 With a wave adios to an industrious milk farmer and his picturesque pasture which we gladly called home for the night, we pushed optimistically northward toward Ubaté. Distancing ourselves from the comfortable plano, our enthusiasm dwindled in conjunction with the bike lane which gave…
Zipaquirá via Chía – Part 2
Well rested, we packed our things and were treated to a traditional Colombian desayuno at a dive on the outskirts of town. A place bound to satiate; a bit run down, an unpaved lot, open to the environment, racks upon racks of freshly made, sensationally aromatic baked goodness that tested the patience of even the…
Zipaquirá via Chía – Part 1
The hurried shuffle, a staple of a lifestyle so familiar, takes a back seat to experience here; a place where time seems to slow to a quiet pace. What begins as a quick morning coffee break with friends often turns to brunch and a stop into the local panadería on the way home just…
We Are Nonlocal 