Blogs

here are some images, moving and otherwise, to tell the story of our beautiful trip to bali. 

i'm currently filming a short documentary about berkeley artist gerhard nicholson. view a rough trailer here.

i recently returned from spending two and a half months in yosemite leading ten students through a 40 day leadership and literacy course. being in the mountains was divine, and the students were pretty stellar as well.

:)

check out the above "landscapes" on flickr, or visit the rest of the galleries. (mountains, rivers, etc.)

10 students from around california - dos palos, atwater, livingston, oakland, san jose, and los olivos - gave it their all this summer. we spent 40 days in yosemite, backpacking, rock climbing, swimming, studying english, and learning about ourselves. it was a privilege to be involved, and to get to know these exceptional teenagers.

(props to elena for eyeballing this granite california atop the huge pile of rocks known as buena vista peak)

:)

In my short tenure at International Rivers, I've come to expect dams in every corner of every country around the globe. Still, I was shocked by the ubiquitous nature of these concrete beasts as we flew above China. On the three-hour flight south from Beijing to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, I counted over 70 dams.

i find the city to be far less attractive than the un-tainted earth.
take a plant from the other side of the world, stick it in a pot,
and cut off some of it's branches,
how could that possibly be more attractive than the tree
right outside your window?

life is better with an exposed heart. i thought about it and it's true.
turns out i don't expose my heart to that to which i am not attracted.

who came up with these styles?
this one, a copy of a 500 year old english home - why?
why should i care about your interesting stairway architecture?
how can that look better here than something OF this land?
could i expose my heart to something this unnattractive?

greetings friends of sagehen creek and extreme sportspeople,

i have just returned from what appears to be, (until declared otherwise), the successful first descent of the wild and scenic sagehen creek, 12 miles north of truckee california. previously thought unrunnable, this unique river has finally been tamed.

i arrived on the scuba-diving pirate island of utila, honduras, on a friday night with a taller-than-me, drum-playing, dreaded and tattoed swede, after an hour and a half nearly-capsizing-the-whole-time boat ride through 15 foot seas, to discover motorcycles, four-wheelers, bicycles and golf carts speeding back and forth along the one pedestrian street, weaving their way between tourists and pirate-speaking locals who wandered to and fro below the sounds of reggae blasted from homemade balcony speakers. then i spent two days patrolling the streets in a haze of indecisive stress, trying to decide between twelve seemingly equal yet highly competitive dive shops, only to choose one which a day later i deemed too much of a coolness-oriented twenty year old hangout and switched to another one to take my diving course. now i am instructed, one on one, by a chain-smoking, speedo-clad german named ralf, who is quite nice and a great teacher. we have gone diving twice, and i have somehow survived with fifty feet of water over my head for halves of hours, drifting along the sides of coral walls with my ears gradually approaching one another due to pressure, without succumbing to the suicidal urge to laugh at the incredibleness and ridiculousness of being that far underwater, thereby dislodging my breathing apparatus from my mouth. i have yet to gain an exemplary degree of "control" or "comfort" with this bizarre sport, but i do have two more days and four more journeys beneath the sea in which to figure the shit out.*

*(two days later) i figured it out.

i think i´m felling in love with xela (it happened last week).
after just one day i was all into this fine guatemalan city...it´s native and mountainous around the edges, plain central american chaos throughout the thick outer core, with a creamy european filling in the center. everywhere you look there´s something beautiful or interesting...and not so touristy either. the lighting in this city looks like it was laid out by a hollywood lighting designer. women roam the streets in beautiful skirts and colorful clothes, looking more beautiful than ...
there are alot of foreigners here, but they´re all studying spanish, so the locals know they ain´t looking to spend a ton of money. it´s real, if not slightly upscale, guatemala.