El Cocuy in the Times

On the Ritak U'Wa Blanco. photo: Marcos Roda

I report from El Cocuy National Park in this week's travel section.

Above the Clouds in a Secret Colombia

AS crampons crunched ice, our guide, Rubará, raised his traditional woven sisal-thread handbag by his face and asked me to snap a photo. We were climbing above 17,000 feet, just shy of the summit of the Ritacuba Blanco, a glaciated peak shaped like a soft-serve ice cream cone, at El Cocuy National Park in Colombia. Aquamarine-hued icicles hung from the maw of a crevasse and, far below, clouds blanketed the Orinoco Basin.

The landscape stretched across dozens of ice-capped peaks and deep cirque valleys. Moraine lakes, formed by the natural erosion from glaciers’ unhurried flow and retreat, shimmered in mineral hues. Nearly 30 miles away, we could just make out the telltale church spire of the town of Soatá. Save for a photographer friend and one other guide on the ice field, no other people were in view. The February day was bright. I’d finally caught my breath.

Read on here. And please check out Dennis Drenner's excellent photos in the slide show as well.


More photos, from Marcos Roda and myself, with the voice of Miguel Herrera; 2:08 in all:


Thanks to mucholoquito for creative commons use of his music, off Jamendo.
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Park Street Remembered

Window views, Park Street, June, 2009

Some ideas about home, explored in this video of the house where I grew up, in Charlottesville. A rough cut; low res; just playing around. Photos mine, from June, 2009.

Or, pay a visit of your own:

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ktbnik

I've taken on a pro bono role over at Killing the Buddha, as contributing editor [whom, as Patrick Symmes once pointed out to me, neither contributes nor edits]. I'll be trying to bring audio and multimedia to the site, even though in the area I complete the three "unders-": under-qualified, under-achieving and under-paid. I'm hoping to convince this capable ITP grad to share some expertise. At any rate, stay tuned over there.

Saint Radovan of Karadzic; or, Jack Hitt does it again

This is the story of the Multi-Zap Zapper, "Mina Minic’s New Radiesthesia With Two Pendulums," and one of the bloodiest warlords of the late twentieth century. If you haven't already, please, please read Jack Hitt's soul-divining short epic, "Radovan Karadzic’s New-Age Adventure," in this week's NY Times Magazine.

And, when in trouble, remember this escape clause: "I am a Herzegovinian woman, and this insults my honor!"

And don't miss the slide show, either.