Costa Rica: Three Days Of Chirripó

Day 0 – Dec 28, 2018

We’ve been at the house near Dominical for several days now, almost a week.  It’s a nice change of pace to head to San Isidro de El General, where we are to rendezvous with Walter, our guide who will lead us to the trailhead and ensure that we’re properly registered for the trek.  The drive to San Isidro is rather calming. In the vehicle with me are my father, my brother-in-law, and my nephew, who is currently nine years old. We speculate that upon completion of our trek, he will be in the running for being the youngest person to summit Cerro Chirripó this year.  Just in the nick of time, since our calendar year is almost over.

Not surprisingly, it’s rather easy to find our meeting place—Panaderia y Cafeteria Mi K-fe—however, there is some consternation over where to park the vehicle.  We end up being able to park next to the cafe, and we head in to get some lunch. I order a cafe con leche and huevos rancheros. The waitress brings a cart to the table and makes my coffee on the spot.

Cafe con leche
Huevos Rancheros

My father has been communicating with Walter, and he joins us soon after we arrive at the cafe.  Walter is quite amicable, and I find out later he is 72 years old, even though he only looks about 55 years old.  He tells me more about Mi K-fe: it’s a local chain with ten or so locations, essentially a franchise, and if I understand correctly, the one in which we sit is the original.  We finish lunch, and the first stop is to fuel up at a gas station in San Isidro since our vehicle is almost empty. We get a brief experience of rush hour in a Costa Rican city (the second largest in San José Province) before we continue up the road to San Gerardo de Rivas in the Talamanca Mountains. Continue reading Costa Rica: Three Days Of Chirripó

The Tourism Project: What are your thoughts?

What is the tourism project?

Recently, I have conceptualized a new writing project that, for now, is intended to be an objective, research-driven essay about tourism and life in small- and medium-sized towns.  I’d like to gather as many perspectives as possible. I’ve put together a brief survey for you to provide yours.

The survey won’t take you more than five minutes to complete.

Other than asking you for your general stance on tourism and the economy, the survey has a few basic questions to help steer the course of the project.

What is it like to live in a tourist town?

What is it like to work in a tourist town?

What is it like to raise kids in a tourist town?

What is it like to retire in a tourist town?

Please help me spread the word about this project, and please do share the link with folks you think would be interested in having their say.  Here’s a QR code anyone can scan to access the survey on a smartphone.

QR code for tourism form

Feel free to fill out the survey if you feel so inclined, and feel free to contact me directly or comment on this article if you’ve got questions about the project and my intentions.

Depending on the direction this project takes, there may be much more here than just the initial essay that gets published in a magazine or journal (and eventually on my blog).  I hope it gets bigger.  I’d like to move it toward a book about tourism, with in-depth examples and case studies from various municipalities around the United States, or perhaps even the world. We are also planning to see this site and take help from professional tour guides

Initially, though, I’m hoping to focus on municipalities in the western part of North Carolina, and the southwestern section of Virginia, since those are the areas that are most readily accessible to me from my home base in Glade Valley, North Carolina.

Here’s a printable PDF flyer you can download and share, and print then hang on a wall anywhere you’d like: community center, place of worship, town hall, school, coffee shop.  Tourism Project Flyer

Finally, if you’re interested in collaborating on this project, I’m definitely interested in hearing from you.  I’ll need some help conducting research and interviews for this project.

Thank you!

Creative Concepts: Ecological Experiential Documentation

As I continue to travel the world—and spend more time exploring my own big backyard right here in North Carolina—I’ve come to realize that I can apply my academic training, professional experience, intelligence, and creative abilities in a combined effort over the next few decades to produce what I think and believe will be experiential documents worth consuming as materials for lifelong learning and understanding.  I am conceptualizing an ongoing series of experiential documentation, taking appropriate form over time as ebooks, print books, magazines, interactive apps, websites, and perhaps even videos.

This concept first came to me when I was looking at a map of the United States and thinking about the difference between national parks and national monuments.  Based on my personal experience onsite at various national monuments, coupled with my research and perusal of the maps of these monuments and the surrounding areas, I realized that I would love to commit to exploring and documenting a sense of place in each of these areas—demonstrating their importance as sacred spaces for maintaining the natural order of our relationship with the environment and all other species with which we share it.

So, to put a stake in the ground, I created a map of all the US National Monuments.  (Yes, there is at least one that does not appear in the image.)

Map of United States National Monuments
Map of United States National Monuments

Inspired by my recent trip to Helsinki, which included a stay at the hostel on Suomenlinna, I decided to add UNESCO World Heritage sites to the map.  I figured it would be interesting to see how many UNESCO sites in North America are within reasonable proximity to US National Monuments, thus allowing me to combine several locations into exploratory experiential documentation journeys of 1-3 months in duration.

Continue reading Creative Concepts: Ecological Experiential Documentation

Side Trip to Helsinki: Sea Fortresses and Jazz Composers

During the entire month of August 2017, I traveled to Norway from the United States.  Based on the fact that it is so easy to find cheap flights between European destinations, coupled with the relatively low cost of staying in hostels (not to mention the option of Couchsurfing for free), as well as the fact that I’d never been to Finland, I decided to take a side trip to Helsinki at the beginning of my travels.

Tuesday

I left the United States on the evening of July 31, connecting through Munich to Oslo on August 1, ultimately landing in Helsinki late that night.  I was so tired that I didn’t realize I left my copy of The Snow Leopard (by Peter Matthiessen) in the seat back pocket on the plane until I got to the airport hotel.  I was quite disappointed, as I was thoroughly enjoying the book, and had made several notes in the portion I had read so far.  Matthiessen recounted an experience from the Himalayas that was strikingly similar to a recent stargazing experience I’d had while camping atop Mount Mitchell in North Carolina.

Erlandson Photography: Landscapes &emdash;
Erlandson Photography: Landscapes

Continue reading Side Trip to Helsinki: Sea Fortresses and Jazz Composers

#WinterSouth: Anticipating Death

I’m staying in Lone Pine, California tonight. Getting up at the crack of dawn and heading into Death Valley tomorrow morning for a few days of camping and shooting. It looks like the weather will be cooperating. I’m also hoping to find a nice spot to finally shoot a video for my Kickstarter campaign: http://kck.st/1eEDQxl
Earlier today, I managed to get a decent shot on my phone from the Mono Lake vista point on US 395:

20140109-210703.jpg
Notice anything? There’s hardly any snow anywhere!!! Not a good sign.