I’m at the bottom of the ocean, and I hear singing. I can’t see them, but their voices are clear, like a bird calling in the night. I wait motionless on the sand bottom under twenty feet of water as reef fish dart around me. I’m listening for whales. The sounds I hear are not […]
Archive | Mexico
The Brewing Storm: Coffee Steeped in Climate Change
I walk into the cabin and have to suppress a gasp. My friend Jon sits on the bed, his entire body covered in lumpy, bright red hives. “My lips feel weird. They’re all swollen.” “I gave him the allergy pill already,” Shannon, his partner, is unnecessarily tidying, something I have noticed she does when she […]
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Why They Stay: A Town On the Edge
On a windswept knuckle of land that juts proudly from Mexico’s Pacific coast, a tiny town perches between cliff and sea. With a smattering of artisanal fishers and restauranteurs, Tehuamixtle has tucked into a precarious edge, protected only slightly by the jagged black headlands of Punta Ipala. To get to the town by land requires […]
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Wings to Nowhere – Birds, Land Use, and Climate
Luis whips his head around so quickly that a drop of water flies out of his nose. He’s mid-sentence, trudging through the heavy sand and talking about community-based management for his town, when he stops abruptly. His eyes grow wide behind his square-ish glasses, and the skin on his thin face pushes back into an […]
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The Truth About Researching by Sail
This blog could also be called ‘Why Sailboats Are the Slowest Possible Way to Get Anywhere.’ Or maybe ‘Research is Tough Enough Without Doing it From a Sailboat.’ Or perhaps ‘How a Sailboat Teaches Me What It Really Means to Learn.’ Let me explain. After we pulled up the hook in Chacala, we made our […]
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The Unfinished Path: Yoga for the People in Chacala
When we sailed into a little bay in the center of Mexico’s Pacific coast, we came to meet old friends. But because we stayed in this town for a couple weeks, I found myself facing some of the uneasy questions of development in Mexico. I didn’t figure it out until much later, but this little […]
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What Can a National Park Do?
“Mexico has many good laws.” Professor Martín Soto leans back from behind a clump of papers on his desk and sighs. “It’s the enforcement that lacks.” I’m sitting in Martin’s office on the second story of the Marine Science and Limnology Institute in Mazatlán, Mexico. The building hangs on the edge of a cliff above […]
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Getting It Wrong: Fear and Learning in Mazatlán
I love giving presentations. It’s sick, I know. But I used to fear it deeply. I have a friend who is a professional street performer, and I have always admired his ability to withstand the potentially saucy, unforgiving, or worst of all, bored crowd. But as the result of training and good advice during my […]
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Sailing to Your Wedding …and other ill-advised feats
You may have noticed the quiet state of this blog for the past few months. This is not because a meditative calm has pervaded throughout the Pacific, or because we have stopped sailing and settled down in the mango-laden mountains of Central America, or even because we have found the perfect wave for Josh. […]
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Finding Altata
“Whatever you do, don’t go to Altata.” These were the last words we heard as we cast off our dock lines in Guaymas. We were about to sail 300 miles with limited charts but plentiful warnings—with the goal of getting to this near-mythical town protected by a bar that might as well be filled with dragons. […]