I found an amazing female adventurer!!!!!
Meet Klara Harden, who hiked across Iceland by herself and then made a gorgeous short length film about it. Learn more about her, her work and the trip via her Facebook, Flickr and Vimeo.
Thanks to Black Eiffel for the tip-off.
View Larger Me as a “My Little Pony”, glasses & all.
Thank you amtendler for the heads up on this, my childhood dream just came true.
View Larger A beautiful photograph of my favorite jewelry designer Kate Jones wearing work from her line Ursa Major. Whenever I have something special to celebrate personally, I allow myself to indulge in a piece of Kate’s.
Is it being 2012 reason enough to celebrate?
Be sure to also check out an ever-evolving storyboard on Kate’s blog. There is also a great interview with Kate over on N’east Style from last year.
Photo from umajor: My hands, my jewelry, shot by dear friend, Ellinor Stigle
Last year I stumbled upon a blog depicting modern-day adventurer/explorer Ben Saunder’s attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole, unsupported aka SOLO in the fastest time ever.
Note: Be sure to check out all the incredible videos that he created with his team in the lead up to the attempt
Unfortunately for us all, Saunders was unable to complete his solo attempt at the North Pole — the weather was working against him and made it impossible to attempt.
I subsequently became utterly fascinated with the new faces and stories of the modern-day adventurer, as before coming across Saunder’s work — has assumed this sort of life was a thing of the past. (I also assumed incorrectly that the kind of brilliant travel writing that came back from said explorations was no longer occurring — but I think we all know there are some insanely wonderful memoirs out there).
Other than Saunders, there is Alastair Humphries (who in 2011 encouraged us all to take some microadventures in our close-to-home environs) and who is also as you read, rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. (See blog here)
Saunders, Humphries as well as Martin Hartley (photographer) and Andy Ward will be attempting a South Pole expedition in 2012, see the expedition website to read up on it.
For me, the beauty in the adventures that these men are embarking on is the ability to continue to see Earth as an incredibly unexplored, unknown planet (much like the Planet Earth series etc with David Attenborough do). That there are STILL places within our reach that can test the limits of what we understand and how we interact with it.
I am missing some fabulous female adventurers though — and am going to track them down because I am sure they exist….
View Larger just ordered this fantastic 2012 calendar from the recently launched online store, our paper shop.
cannot WAIT for it to arrive and grace my walls with its beauty.
highly recommend checking out their premier collection of paper goods. i, for one, am saving up my pennies to ask them to design some custom stationary for me someday.
erato - call your girlfriend
(via for me, for you)
The high five liberated everybody. It gave you permission to enjoy your high points.
— Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim in The History and Mystery of the High Five (via courtneylewis)
I have written into them, in my own blood, everything that I have experienced and endured,
— Gustav Mahler upon finishing his Second Symphony (as quoted in the New York Times)
Beautiful gardening video from Tiger In A Jar.
This reminds me of when I was very little and we lived in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia (aka The Plains, Virginia). My mother and step father created some really beautiful gardens on our farm (which was called Hotspur and located on a road that went from being called something like Rt 24 to Rock Hill Mill Road — I kid you not). My mother and step father each had a horse of 2 (each new one brought into the family, more beautiful than the next — my favorite wouldn’t be purchased until we moved into town — a real beaut, a mix between a thoroughbred and a Clydesdale).
Anway, I am rambling — but when we were kids, we had one massive garden patch right under the best climbing tree on the property. My mom would plant sunflowers that I imagined were giants and reached above even my tall step father and eventually we had to put a fence around the garden so that the deer wouldn’t come and eat everything in the night.
The glory of this garden were the amazing cucumbers that would sprout each year, and also great varieties of lettuce. (I still crave cold cucumber soup in the summer with SO MUCH DILL due to summers with an abundance of cukes).
My mom had a thing for tomatoes, but I was never much of a fan as a kid — I loved tomato tarts with Champagne mustard and beautiful mozzerella but I liked mine sans tomates.
Also, we had a long drive way that ended in a loop (kind of like a lasso). In the middle of that gravel laso, my mom and step father built a garden that was a red bricked knot with 5 different plots contained in the knot. I think they based it off a garden that they saw in a beautiful English landscaping book that was in our library. That was always full of all things flowering — including a childhood favorite, zinnias.
My mother would always faithfully wear the zinnia bouquets that I wove together for her, even though she was dreadfully allergic to bees and even though zinnias and bees loved each other more than I loved reading a good book in bed at the time (and let’s be honest, still do…)
Sadly, the people that bought Hotspur from my family pulled that knot garden out tout de suite upon moving in as we set off for what turned into only a 6-month adventure living in the US Virgin Islands. That story for another time…..
Anyway, that all seems like a very long time ago and this video reminded me of all of that…. pretty special, right?
This idea (that man is perfectible and so should strive for perfection) has been around for 2,000 years, but it has lately been streamlined and turbo-charged: in its contemporary incarnation, it regards any unfulfilled human potentialities as a particularly sad and sclerotic form of entropy.
—
From “Our Imperfect Search for Perfection” by Carina Chocano for the New York Times via K. Chu
I would add that the internet has made this worse as we no longer compare ourselves to the people in our immediate circle, but now we must grapple with the world at-large — where those people succeeding seem to outweight the failures and their self-created or society-created pedestals grow higher everyday.
On the flip (as in interpreting this as a good thing) — with the ability to see the successes of people seemingly similar to ourselves — we are buoyed in our own aspirations to do more, achieve more, work harder to realize our dreams to their full extent. If so and so can take an idea, run with it, and make it work - why can’t I? Perhaps pushing ourselves to achieve something that we wouldn’t do on our own.
Also, I am reminded that this all comes back to my Intro to Political Philosophy course that I took in 2004 - and the key question of our semester: “What is the good life?” A question that I never answered with any amount of satisfaction.
i want to throw and attend parties that require what looks like lemonade, cupcakes, and paper flower crowns stacked high on my head.
summer arrived and then left geneva, and now we have rain. this video makes me crave summer parties.
Nora Ephron Salutes legendary Director Mike Nichols at the 38th AFI Life Achievement Award.
I love this woman, forever.
