(Editors Note: In the summer of 2013, I worked a course with Adam Swisher and Peter Nichols. For some reason we became infatuated with our trash bags, its uses and…
Category: NOLS
The plane touched down sometime around ten pm. Next to me, Brenna leaned forward and peered out the small window at the light subdued darkness. We had spent the last…
The day started much like the previous ones in India, with us cooking on a porch and rain falling from the sky. This morning we were in Khati, a small…
Cassiopeia and Ursa Major make their slow, daily rotation around the hulking 6,611 meter shoulder of the Nanda Devi satellite peak, Nanda Khat (the bed of Nanda Devi). The squeak…
All I want to do is lie back down, curl up and rest. Sleep won’t come, but the lethargy is winning its battle. “I accidentally put your drom in upside…
Above me white puffs of cloud swirl in and out of blue skies. They coalesce out of nothingness, dance and paint the blue sky canvas with strokes that I want…
Isn’t actually a road at all, at least in the direction from which we are approaching. Initially it is a wide expanse of white snow, a veritable palette of potential…
As usual, I wished for rain. It is always easier on the ego than feigning a case of the Sphinx Sphincter or Gannett Gut, things that are failings of the…
27 November 2013–Ambivalence mattered today. Jim and I have passed the planning torch over to the students. They are working in groups of two to plan the days. I have…
How can something so beautiful be so, so… unforgiving, or maybe unwelcoming? The mountains of New Zealand are cruel mistresses. They tempt me with their beauty, accessibility and challenge. I…
“Why do we have to go so early? Will it be a long day?” Hannah asks. “That is a good question” I think to myself. “Well there are a couple…
“I like the sound of rain on the fly” Jim says, half prone in his red, mummy bag. “It is especially good when you know you don’t have to go…
Torrential sheets of rain fall loudly on onto the tin roof of the McCoy Hut. I have set our small cook pot outside under the eaves to collect water for…
Twenty-four hours ago we waded, almost thoughtlessly, across the calf deep McCoy Stream, climbed the stony embankment and walked to the small hut on the north side of the creek.…