Lone Rucksack

“At its best, fiction is not a diversion but a means of knowing the world.”
―Charles Baxter

Timing and perspective shape everything we see.

“She has a winning smile. She wins, she always wins.”
―Charles Baxter

Several hours outside of town we encountered the whiteout: the town in one direction, the North Pole the other, just five snowmobiles in the white mist and snow. Marveling, we backed away into the soft white until the guide called out, “Not so far from the snowmobiles, polar bears cross here,” then ran back to the group.

“She is magic. She does not know it.”
—Avijeet Das

Snowmobiling toward the North Pole and the Tempelfjord glacier. After hours, we arrived at the glacier, the guide constantly scanning the horizon for the threat of polar bears.

“The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not.”
―Cormac McCarthy

The moon rising over Cape Town.

“The hands of my clock turned elastic while I imprinted these feelings in memory. You must remember this. It was all I had, all I’ve ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive.
Memory.”
―Abraham Verghese

Memory and grief live together: seeing impossibly beautiful things the way golden tufts of spun clouds drift over empty spaces in the bitter cold, the relief of warmth after tearing across the tundra, the widening of the heart in the meeting and leaving of people, the stretch of snow crust in the endless distance and looking back at the frozen candy sky with snowflakes dancing on the tips of brittle eyelashes to see the tiny sled in the wide expanse … a sled … a dog … then nothing.

“Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted?”
― Abraham Verghese

“The hands of my clock turned elastic while I imprinted these feelings in memory. You must remember this. It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive.
Memory.”
―Abraham Verghese

Cape Town days.
1. Lions Head at sunset
2. Painted Lady butterfly

Hundreds of Caribbean flamingos flock between mangrove forests in the Yucatán to feed on mollusks, small crustaceans and insects.

“We seek the fire of the spark that is already within us.”
―Kamand Kojouri

Great people + teamwork bringing everything together.

"Surely, of all the wonders of the world, the horizon is the greatest."
—Freya Stark

“My solitude is a lover that
I will always return to.”
—Warsan Shire

“Like running, trying to live a good life has to hurt a little bit, or we're not running hard enough, not really trying.”
―June Jordan

Riding motocross has always been a dream of mine— and no matter how many times I’ve slid my Suzuki across roads in the jungle or down steep descents, I have zero experience. Pulling a shirt over my head, a little girl sitting next to me said, “it’s my first time too,” and we fist bumped, and even after riding that was still the best part of the day.

“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”⁣
―Fyodor Dostoyevsky⁣
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Post cycling. Loosening the helmet. Taking off the gear. Cleaning Bike. Sweat. Train. Love. Repeat. ⁣

“You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.”⁣
—Ernest Hemmingway⁣
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The dying sun.

“There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps…”⁣
—Helen Macdonald⁣
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Beautiful dark holes in the Yucatán.

“Like physics. Some things don’t react but everything is alive.” ⁣
—Carol⁣
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Everything was white in the early morning fog, so luminous the shapes that appeared had sharp edges and I wondered if the fog was the illusion, or I was.⁣

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.⁣
—Cormac McCarthy⁣
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Cenotes are essentially sinkholes— they’re formed as acidic water slowly dissolves a mineral called calcite in the limestone bedrock, and eventually collapses to leave a water-filled depression. Interestingly enough, the creation of cenotes in the Yucatan Peninsula goes back 66 million years to the meteor Chicxulub, which upon impact created underground depressions that were then flooded, and forever changed how the water flowed underground in the area. ⁣

“We're not words, Henry, we're people.⁣
Words are how others define us, but we can define ourselves any way we choose.”⁣
—Shaun David Hutchinson⁣
⁣
So it begins— disassembling the bike, carefully taping the pieces together, packing the bike box. The real adventure is finding the box itself. ⁣
⁣
I’ve been scurrying around this week trying to find one for my flight— at the last minute yesterday, as a storm rolled out of Playa del Carmen, I received a message from a shop on the highway— they have a box! Leaving the shop, bike box in my left hand, bicycle in my right, I walked back across the highway below the underpass, like some enormous cycling creature. The road I needed to cross had turned into a river, cars slowly wading through. Crouching like a goblin below the underpass in the rain, I took off the tires and the handlebars, slid the bike into the bike box, and waved down every taxi until one finally agreed to take me after explaining I was trapped on the other side of the river, and couldn’t cross. We wrestled the bike box into the trunk, and that was that. One of the many bike box stories from the road. Onward. ⁣

“What is inside, is also outside.”⁣
―Abhijit Naskar⁣
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Early mornings in the jungle.

“We looked at each other. And it occurred to me that despite his faults, which were numerous and spectacular, the reason I’d liked Boris and felt happy around him from almost the moment I’d met him was that he was never afraid. You didn’t meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same time such oddball and unthwartable faith in what, in childhood, he had liked to call “the Planet of Earth.”⁣
—The Goldfinch⁣
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All of a sudden, it was there— the golden light of the morning sun across the field. It illuminated everything.⁣

“She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.”
—Markus Zusak

The path through the ruins in Yaxuna, Mexico— what was once a rival city to Chichén Itzá.

“The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring— and all of the acts carried out— on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with a cool, measured detachment. On the moon there was neither air nor wind. Its vacuum was perfect for preserving memories unscathed. No one could unlock the heart of the moon. Aomame raised her glass to the moon and asked, “Have you gone to bed with someone in your arms lately?”
The moon did not answer.
“Do you have any friends?” she asked.
The moon did not answer.
“Don’t you get tired of always playing it cool?”
The moon did not answer.”
―Haruki Murakami

“Well, maybe it started that way. As a dream, but doesn’t everything. Those buildings. These lights. This whole city. Somebody had to dream about it first. And maybe that is what I did. I dreamed about coming here, but then I did it.”⁣
―Roald Dahl⁣
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I stand at the Observatory in downtown Yaxuna, what was once a thriving city founded an estimated 2,500-2,800 years ago, a metropolis that was once considered a rival to Chitzen Itza.

“When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.”⁣
―Tennessee Williams⁣
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The field was strung spiderwebs in the early morning beside the ruins.