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Beached

January 16, 2019

Emboldened by my first snowy owl quest, I set out a couple of weeks ago on a southward drive to distant Jersey beaches, yet again following the ebb and flow of crowdsourced reports. It was a wee hour, spur of the moment decision in the middle of a bad weekend night. After a restless stack of bad dreams and worse wakefulness, endlessly tossing and turning in fear of the world's darkness like the Hobbits at Tom Bombadil's, I figured I could make better use of precious time. If I could not sleep, then I would drive. I made...

Retour aux Sources - Part 1, A Bird's-eye View

March 18, 2024

When Marie offered me a Côte d’Azur birthday pilgrimage recently, I gasped and shivered with absolute delight. It was the best present ever. But without missing a beat, the raspy little voice of reason whispered in my ear: "Oh? And how are you going to make this happen without sabotaging 'work'?" You see, work, with its inglorious cliché of putting bread on the table and a roof above our heads, had been steadily creeping from the intended status of a means to an end to that of absolute ruler of my life, like a...

Return to Chamonix, Part 4 – Retour à la montagne

November 7, 2019

High above Chamonix, a sharp granite needle called Aiguille du Midi shoots into the sky as if attempting to escape Earth's embrace. Belonging to a crisply jagged ridge called les Aiguilles de Chamonix, the Aiguille du Midi tops at three thousand eight hundred and forty-two meters, or almost thirteen thousand feet above sea level, which means it mightily towers some nine thousand feet above the valley floor. The rocky spur is in great company with Mont Blanc, roof of Europe, looming just to the south, other famous summits...

The Road to Mokala, Part 1 - Sahara Below

October 31, 2017

Almost twenty years ago, an old man, aged beyond reason by a systematic abuse of smoking, alcohol and anger, burst into tears one day at the memory of travels it turns out he regretted as much as he missed them. He had been at peace in Tahiti, in love in Mexico and had fought in Algeria. He was my estranged father, scarred forever by the mental wounds of war. He passed away soon thereafter, abandoned and cynical to the end. I do not have a tombstone to visit because he wanted himself cremated, his last destructive,...

The Namaqualand Bloom, Part 1 - Luxury is a Luxury

October 19, 2015

Growing up in the south of France, I think I might have taken flowers for granted. As a kid I never doubted their supremacy and thought they were as intrinsic a part of nature as clouds and oceans. Québec, I knew, mostly lacked said flowers, but I assumed that was an exceptional stigma brought on by euphorically snowy winters and since Canada lured me in on occasional visits with maple syrup, marshmallows, peanut butter, poutine and color TV, I had unconsciously disregarded the flowerlessness of my other homeland as...

Airbus A380 Transatlantic Flight

January 2, 2011

Slowly sipping my coffee, I looked around me with unbelieving eyes. The large waiting area of gate A6 at JFK's Terminal 4 was full. It was hard to grasp that all these passengers were going to fit on board a single plane. But then again, the giant aircraft parked just outside in the cold, on a snowy tarmac, was no ordinary plane. The Emirates Airbus A380-800 about to whisk us over the Atlantic all the way to Dubai - at 41,000 feet and close to the speed of sound - was simply the largest passenger jet ever built. Here...

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