mastodon 4.7.3Erik creates the travel journal, Notes from the Road. Work featured in Time, Oregonian, Vogue, Lonely Planet, National Geographic Traveller and more.
Thick-horned nudibranch in a Cannon Beach tidepool.
One of the strange little wonders of the Oregon coast.
Euljiro after the machines stop.
Morning light at Ridgefield NWR.
Washington does this sometimes.
Bleached trunks standing in shallow turquoise water near Tuheiava Pass, the only entrance to the lagoon of Tikehau Atoll in French Polynesia.
Story from Tikehau:
https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/oceania/tikehau.html
The backstreets of Rovinj
Still water, old stone, and the first light of day — Venice.
Male Black-crested Coquette, Cartago Province.
One of the tiniest hummingbirds at just 2.5–3 inches, somehow one of the most ornate. Everyone notices the crest, but it’s the gold orbs on his chest that steal the show. Instead of defending a single patch of flowers, these hummingbirds moves through the forest on a circuit, visiting scattered blooms in sequence, more like a bee than a typical hummingbird.
Shorebirds in flight, Oregon Coast.
Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, short-lived desert pools catching the last light of day.
During tonight’s #StateOfTheUnion, here’s a sober record to review:
A documented accounting of Trump-inspired violence, with dates, locations, and citations:
https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/roam/trump-violence.html
Political language has impact — and so does the public record. #sotu
I just updated my Hawaiian Islands map page with two new maps. They replace an older watercolor map and hopefully depict the islands better than I did before. As far as I know, there is no map of the full archipelago online that names (almost all) the rocks, islets, atolls and pinnacles.
One of the strange things about Baja is how it makes the world can feel uninhabited. Isla Carmen, Baja California Sur
A flash of blue and yellow through the leaves — Yucatán Jay.
Green hairstreak, Cap de Creus, Spain.
A flash of emerald in the coastal scrub.
Blue and turquoise door, Sidi Bou Said
Lake Manly has returned to Death Valley.
For a moment, the basin fills again—water spreading across a place that is usually defined by absence.
And with it comes an old story I’ve been following for decades: a one-inch fish, living at the edge of what this landscape can hold, and the long conflict over whether it should survive at all.
I’ve updated one of my oldest pieces on Notes from the Road:
The Pupfish Wars of Death Valley
https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/desertsouthwest/death-valley.html