I am writing this along the banks of Jack Creek deep inside Wrangell St Elias National Park…in Alaska! It has again been a long time since you have heard from me. When I arrived back in the Bay Area in May, wet and wobbly from my misadventure in Costa Rica, my only instinct was to keep […]

I know it has been way too long since you have heard from me. Even the best of friends have to keep in regular contact. You deserve better. I know you do.  To be honest, I was allowing life to get in the way, indulging myself in a new romance. And I call myself a […]

It is hard to believe I’ve been in Costa Rica for three months already! The days just melt away. I start each day with a swim in the cove, followed by a shower to rinse off the salt and a breakfast of fruit and coffee, then I sit down to write before it simply gets […]

Just as in our own lives, a healthy birth and the death of a child are the most joyous and tragic events possible, so it seems, they are for dolphins. On our voyages collecting data, we have been privileged to witness incredible, intimate moments in the dolphin lifecycle. A couple of weeks ago, while we […]

I’ve been doing a surprising amount of thinking about the Artic as I sit here sweating in Costa Rica. There are many ways that the two environments, which on the surface seem so different – the cold, dry, sparse Arctic and the hot, humid, abundant rainforest – encompass startling similarities. Some of the similarities are simple like mildewed […]

This place is alive with sound. Indeed, I heard its music before I ever set foot on land. As the boat carried me an hour through the mangroves along the Sierpe River and across the width of Drake Bay to our cove, we hit a wall of sound so dense that it reached us while […]

When I started this blog, I thought it was going to be only about my trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A journey into vast wilderness that I hoped would turn me from a Greenhorn into a seasoned adventurer. A trip that was supposed to satisfy my wanderlust, after which I would return ready […]