Tales & Reflections

INTO AFRICA: Part Five — Among the Maasai

MAASAI MARA NATIONAL RESERVE – Nighttime at Bateleur Tented Camp, just outside Maasai Mara National Reserve in western Kenya, near the Tanzanian border. ©Patrick Endres I’ve just returned to my tented, bush-surrounded camp cabin after a spectacular dinner on Bateleur’s open-air...

INTO AFRICA: Part Four — Kenya Connections

MOUNT KENYA SAFARI CLUB – It’s 10:40 pm on our second night at the Mount Kenya Safari Club. I’m sitting on my verandah, staring into the light-less night and up at the star-spattered sky, more full of stars – in this high-altitude African blackness —...

INTO AFRICA: Part Two — Dramas in the Bush

AMBOSELI NATIONAL RESERVE — We’ve just stepped off an 18-seat Air Kenya propeller plane onto the airstrip at Amboseli National Reserve. Vast brown savannah surrounds us. A nearby herd of ungainly, big-horned wildebeest stares at the noisy, propeller-beaked bird that just disrupted their grazing. Beyond...

INTO AFRICA: Part One — The Kiss of the Giraffe

NAIROBI — My introduction to the wildlife of East Africa was a kiss from a giraffe. No, this isn’t a metaphor. We’re talking about a real wet lip-smacker here, a come-here-big-boy-and-let-me-give-you-a-taste-of-my-long-black-tongue kiss. But let’s back up a bit. I arrived in...

Candace Rose Rardon: Number Lessons on Nusa Penida

Candace Rose Rardon is an American writer, photographer and artist who sketches as she travels. These sketches, combined with the stories behind them, poignantly portray those moments of encounter and illumination that become the stepping stones of adventure, inner and outer. We are extremely pleased...

Among the Twitchers in Central America

I train the borrowed binoculars on the trees where our guide is pointing, squinting through the glass. “Follow that branch to the end,” Gareth says. “It’s the flash of turquoise, right there.” I try again, scanning the foliage surrounding Quirigua,...

50 Shades of Green

It doesn’t take long for the forest to reclaim you in the Pacific Northwest. A few steps on the trail and the world as you know it morphs into a misty mountain wonderland, a place where the dripping rain and muddy paths shouldn’t stop you...

Communing with the Moai on Easter Island

I recently returned from a one-week trip to Easter Island, the realization of a dream that began decades ago when I first saw photos of that remote Pacific island’s iconic stone heads. Despite all the photos I’d pored over in mystery and amazement through the decades,...