The problem was, frankly, everything. Comically so if it would have been in hindsight. As I considered the next move in a series of already hasty decisions, the wind snapped a branch from an evergreen and collapsed into the five foot wall of snow that had accumulated overnight outside the front door. The mountain house […]
Author: elysekent
Tame eels in London Town
A dark caterpillar weaved through Bethnal Green, revealing an eruption of life – as one tends to find in even the most unassuming corners in London. Offbeat ceramic fair? Hoards of bespeckled 30 and 60 somethings awash in knitted garments. Basement photography exhibit on circus life? Boxy college students pointing avidly. Bar dedicated to KGB-style […]
Diagonal Starting Points
It’s 5 am. A band of knee-high crows are cowering outside my window, seemingly very disgruntled. Their calls range from a cranky baby to a gremlin to an old, curmudgeon. And now I realize where my supernormal dreams originated. The place is a vinyl box, plastic-coated and purposeful. Each item, knob, hook, cabinet is multi-purposeful […]
A Spaniard in Antartica (or Tallinn)
There is a short catalog of Christmas songs repeatedly played all over the world. Imagine that. The same 1957 Jingle Bell tune that plays while you pass off a store-bought Albertson’s pie for home-baked is the same one playing for half a year in balmy Cadiz. Tallinn was no different.
Abnormalities & contradictions in Australia
Green had never been such a complex yet vague idea. Seafoam, ivy, sage, spruce. Sharp needles, crosshatched blades, overhanging branches. As I wound through the wild coastal grasses of the Great Ocean Trail, parts of the trail rode the ridge high, performing optical reveals when emerging from a burrowed, cored-out meadow’s nest. The wind pushed […]
The rust-colored kilometers of Bolivia
The journey was windier than I could have possibly imagined. The road leapt over mountainsides, through chalky gray rivers swirling with metallic reflections of the sky.
Deciphering Slovak
Circling the roundabout for the fifth time, my patience began to wane. The backpackers that I had seen walking from the bus stop on the main highway had almost made it to their destination. I knew were they were heading. The one hostel in town, the Ginger Monkey, where I had originally planned on staying […]
A Tale of Immediate Departures, Part I
// Mt. Rushmore Road had a new median: rows of bumbling motorbikes. Each with the heft of an antibiotic, force-fed cow. And the same went for their owners, who were parading around like Macaque monkeys in their cheek-perforated leather pants. One of every two bikers tramping around was grossly overweight and the same statistic was […]
Coasting with uncertainty
Two days went by without seeing another soul. I slept to complete silence and perpetual daylight in a cabin sprouting turf. I hiked deep into forests worthy of Midsummer’s Night Dream, picked distant mountain tops and found my way to the top. Then I arrived at the edge of Lake Bessvatnet to a […]
Basking in the mud
We we’re in a time crunch. The storm had maniacally thrown remnants of ancient trees onto the road, blocking the only route to Cochamo. Highway 65 stitched along the Estuaria Reloncavi fjord and, on its left, a wall of ancient trees towered. Row boats bobbed, a lone cow stood motionless, stranded by high tide on […]