Luang Prabang is the cultural gem of Laos, a place that, like its people, is both proud of its identity yet rooted in its practice of kindness and humility. To walk the streets is to stroll through a panoramic in history – dozens of Buddhist temples stand amid rows of French colonial architecture, the dark jungle hardwoods swallowed by low canopies of Bougainvillea, drooping flowers pink and white. A harmonious duality exists on this wedge of forested land, bordered by the fabled Mekong and its little sibling the Nam Khan, and when the sun dips to the jungle and paints stripes of ruddy orange light across the tents of the night market, a sleepy town turns bustling, the streets bubbling over with the murmurs of locals and tourists alike.

Penobscot Bay is a place of hidden anchorages and distant lighthouses in the mist, a place where scattered fishing villages perch atop granite rising with bright moss and spiderwebs of lichen. It is a place where the people make a living out of what the ocean provides and struggle when it doesn’t, and it breeds a different type of soul, one that lives a bit closer to the water’s surface and understands the ebb and flow of a life lived closely with nature.

The Columbia Plateau ranges over eastern Oregon and Washington, into Idaho, a vast tract of land defined by the rain shadow of the Cascades and split by the worn scar of the Columbia River. Here, the landscape embodies a time since passed, a fleeting vision, where the remnants of the agricultural golden age are reclaimed by the inexorable cycles of nature. Dilapidated buildings stand like forgotten buoys in a sea of pale grass; markers that once held meaning now float, adrift. Above them all, the Cascade peaks of Hood and Adams stand watch, sentinels indifferent to the impermanent landscape. It’s a place for reflection and for stillness, and though the wind howls over these plains most days, it speaks of solitude, of memories and things long lost.

From September ‘17 to May ‘18, I had the opportunity to undertake a different type of education: an intensive dive into a program called Hunter Gatherer Immersion. We learned to track bear and fox across the sands of the Oregon coast, forage and prepare the bountiful plants of the American Northwest, and hunt turkey with the bows we had carved, using the knives we had forged. We slept in snow caves, and fasted alone while we learned from the fires we had sparked, with the tools we had created.

Through it all, the five of us bonded in a way that few in our country do these days: quietly, with respect for each other’s journey, and a mutual reverence of nature. By the end, we had experienced something so personal that it proved difficult to share; but like the forest, the words are better left behind, in favor of truer expressions.

During the summer, the city of Portland, Oregon becomes a battleground for far-right and anti-fascist groups to clash, a hotbed for nationalist groups to converge and face off against the liberal populace. It becomes a place where deep seated conflict rears apparent, where old wounds are made fresh again, a place where sometimes neither side can agree on what they are fighting for and why. Perhaps most of all, these protests represent a country divided and confused, a collection of individuals desperate to be heard and willing to fight to belong.

Norway, the land of dark waters and rising stone. 

My home, a place of rolling thunderstorms and humid nights. 

My father, a man made from salt and smoke and something sweet. 

An abstract look at detail, composition, and the landscapes that hide within. 

Agathe, of the land of dark water and rising stone. 

Abandoned, decrepit, the 19th century barns of Ohio represent a time lost to the rapid growth of industry, and remain a symbol of simpler times in this nation. 

Captures of the night, of hidden colors and a world ever in motion.