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Rewilding | Discover

Rewilding

Feral is a delicious word. It means to be ‘in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication.’ For those of us living in the  the modern world, feral is something we yearn for, and deserve.

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Cowboys & Creativity | Discover

Cowboys & Creativity

In the Great Basin of northern Nevada – a vast desert of scratchy sagebrush and bleached white, dried out salt beds – there are cowboys who recite poetry. Earlier this year I visited Elko, the town where they gather each January, and found it extraordinary that men who ride bulls and wrestle steers for fun, men whose macho swagger could run John Wayne out of town, would be inspired to get in touch with their feelings. But perhaps it shouldn’t have. Artistic inspiration can strike any of us, at any time, and recent scientific evidence suggests its blast is most potent when, like cowboys, we’re riding off into the sunset.

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Utah Chasing Dinosaurs | Discover

Utah Chasing Dinosaurs

There are monsters in the wall of bones. In the dried out sandstone desert of northeastern Utah they rise to the surface of the earth like blood flushing skin. I trail my hand against the embossed remains of enormous teeth, articulated tailbones and talons that could crush a skull like grapes. But these skeletons are not the product of nightmares; these old bones once walked the earth. “Don’t worry,” a nearby Ranger says, as if reading my thoughts. “He’s too big for your closet and he definitely won’t fit under your bed.”

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Yellowstone in Winter | Discover

Yellowstone in Winter

Winter in Yellowstone is steam and silence and dances of fire and ice. From the edge of Old Faithful, the centerpiece of the largest active geyser basin on earth, explosions echo like war drums beneath my feet. The ground hisses. A jet of scalding water erupts 90-feet in the air and crystalises instantly in the cold, falling like falsetto keys. This is the boiling ground. A wilderness of more than 10,000 hot springs, bubbling pools and tapestries of magma heated water. Temperatures here can plummet to fifty below. Herds of wild bison, elk and wolves roam free. Winter in Yellowstone is violence and solitude, life or death, a clash of fire and freeze.

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Ecuador: Cloud Forest Safari | Discover

Ecuador: Cloud Forest Safari

In the cloud forests of Ecuador water is king.  It hangs on the moss-covered trees like a thick wet coat.  It drips light-footed from the canopy and gathers in globules, like prisms, that stick to upturned palm leaves and blades of sheer grass.   Its noise is ever present, in rivers and waterfalls, in the soft squelch of mud and the torrent of sudden rain. read more…

Morocco: Festival Fantasia | Discover

Morocco: Festival Fantasia

The gunshot snaps all attention to its sound.  Two-dozen Berber horsemen charge across the red earth, their rifles raised in unison at the midday sun.  Behind me a toothless women flicks her tongue in loud ululation as the riders circle back towards us, gun-smoke leaking from their barrels and shrouding us in a mist of blood-coloured dust. read more…