The Muddy Backwater of the Travel Blogosphere
A lemon shaped like nothing in any Sicilian market, and the colonel who bred its ancestor. Part III of The Citrus Kingdom crosses by ferry to Lipari in the Aeolian Islands, where a backyard of misshapen citrus leads to a Garibaldi revolutionary who set down his rifle and picked up a grafting knife.
The fruit nobody ever bought is the one that held up the entire Sicilian citrus trade. Part II of The Citrus Kingdom follows the sour orange from Norman Cefal to a failed graft in a Florentine garden, and on to the strangest wrong answer Charles Darwin ever gave.
How a weirdo fruit from the far end of the known world made Palermo the capital of a citrus kingdom. Part I of The Citrus Kingdom follows the citron from monsoon Asia to a hidden Arab courtyard in Palermo, one careful handoff at a time.
After twenty-five years of field sketching from a waterproof travel tin, I finally built a permanent studio watercolor palette: sixty pigments organized across two porcelain palettes, mapped, labeled, and laminated.
A hand-painted watercolor map of Sicily, first created in 2014 and updated in 2026 for the Citrus Kingdom articles, depicting Mount Etna, the island's coastlines, and its hill towns.
A hand-drawn map of the seven volcanic islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily: Lipari, Vulcano, Stromboli, Salina, Filicudi, Alicudi, and Panarea.
An illustrated guide to 176 chili peppers from around the world, exploring their origins, history, cultivation, and remarkable diversity.
Two hand-painted maps of Hawaiʻi: the full 1,500-mile archipelago and the eight main Hawaiian Islands.
Sketches of a disappearing roadside—motels, signs, and the fading visual language of the American desert.
Lake Manly rises again, reviving the fight over water, extinction, and a one-inch fish that has survived in Devils Hole for ten thousand years.
Along a quiet river in Costa Rica, insects, parasites, and hidden lives reveal the living systems beneath everything we take for granted.
Patrick Moore claims wildfires aren't getting worse because of climate change. A forensic rebuttal shows how heat, drought, and atmospheric drying are driving larger, more destructive fires.
At Lago Angostura in Costa Rica, a single drop of water reveals the hidden infrastructure of life — from microbes and plankton to the ecosystems that sustain the living world.
A viral hellbender video raises a larger question: what happens when handling sensitive wildlife becomes social media content — and who decides when admiration becomes harm?
In the mist below Turrialba, life beneath the forest floor proves more foundational than stone and steel. Part III of Turrialba Volcano and the Infrastructure of Everything.
A photo gallery documenting the memorials and vigils in Minneapolis after the fatal shootings of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration enforcement agents.
A systematic rebuttal of Chris Dorsey's polar bear claims, featuring interviews with Arctic sea-ice scientist Dr. Julienne Stroeve and National Geographic photographer Kiliii Yuyan, grounded in long-term population science.
Above and below ground on Costa Rica's Turrialba Volcano, a fungus beetle and a Costa Rican Red Leg Tarantula reveal the hidden networks of decay, communication, and connection that hold the forest together.
On Costa Rica's Turrialba Volcano, cloud forests, mixed flocks, and unseen ecological systems reveal the living infrastructure that makes a habitable world possible.
A detailed rebuttal of Jon Miltimore's hurricane claims, explaining why raw storm counts mislead and how climate change is making hurricanes more destructive even as their frequency stays flat.
In the Tunis Medina, walking with my family becomes a way of learning how ideas of power survive across generations — written into the geometry of streets that have resisted every attempt to make them legible.
A journey from Tunisia's Zaghouan highlands to the Tunis Medina, tracing Berber ridge villages, Roman aqueducts, and salt lakes alive with flamingos — a landscape that shapes the lives within it.
A tiny jewel of a leafhopper captured ejecting a droplet of honeydew at high speed — revealing a hidden world of micro-ballistics happening millions of times per second across the planet.
In Tunisia's most fantastical seaside village, a walk through the blue and white alleys of Sidi Bou Said becomes a meditation on what makes a place truly beautiful — and why imitation never equals integrity.
In Portland, protest became art. Notes from the Road documents a city's creative defiance as hundreds stood against Trump's ICE — blending humor, costume, and courage in one of the most photographed protest movements in America.
Patrick Moore claims nuclear radiation is harmless, even healthy. Notes from the Road dismantles his pseudoscientific defense of nuclear energy and exposes the distortions of radiation health science driving it.
Some believe Donald Trump could win the Nobel Peace Prize, but his record of inciting violence and division at home tells a different story. Notes from the Road maintains the most exhaustive documented record of Trump-inspired violence.
A handpainted watercolor map of Tunisia showing the country's deceptive geography — from the green northern hills and Roman ruins to the vast, empty reaches of the Sahara.
In M'dina and Gozo's fields, bejna completes an 8,000-year Maltese journey through history.
From Neolithic seafarers to modern refugees, the hidden history of Malta is written in cheese.
A watercolor map of the Maltese Islands—Malta, Gozo, and Comino—showing the archipelago and its major towns, painted to accompany my travel stories.
A night hike in Bisti/De-Na-Zin reveals one of Earth's best windows into the Cretaceous—an exposed fossil delta where the Western Interior Sea once flowed.
Ganghwa Island's tidal flats host the endangered Black-faced Spoonbill—and an overlooked case for cooperation amid rising nationalism and isolationism.
Paria Canyon glows with color and silence. A walk through its narrows becomes a reflection on reading, memory, and the spread of conspiratorial thinking.
Drawings, field notes, and sketches from my time traveling through cities, coastlines, and countryside in Korea.
A barge and tugboat have crushed a protected coral reef—and Bakers Bay Club refuses to act. Fowl Cays bleeds while the billionaires stall and their subcontractors sue each other.
Industrial alleys, tomcats, weird economies and the machines of memory in Seoul's Euljiro neighborhood
A guide to yucca species from around the globe, brought to life with charming hand-drawn sketches for plant enthusiasts and nature lovers.
Paddling across Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island of Hawaii to visit Captain Cook's memorial and snorkel the pristine reef beneath it.
My sketches and illustrations of Venice and the Venetian cities of the Adriatic include notes and sketches from Venice, Croatia and Slovenia.
As we ascend the Santa Marta Mountains in Northern Colombia, I offer my defense of colorful words and language.
Notes from the Road investigates each chapter in Patrick Moore's latest book, asking whether readers have been bamboozled by pseudoscience?
In Venice, Istrian Croatia and Slovenia, I imagine the challenge of building cities as elegant as those of the Venetian Empire in tomorrow's world.
While exploring Baja Sur's magical freshwater wetlands, I find the telltale signs of development and tourism spilling into the fragile ecosystem.
While hiking in the Vermilion Cliffs, I dive deep into the ancient geological epochs that created these beautiful rainbows of stone. Includes an interview with provocateur Matt Livingston Omega.
A complete guide to all the world's hot sauce types, with hand-drawn sketches.
Notes from the Road urges author Bruce Haedrich to abandon his indefensible thesis on EV batteries.
A backpacking trip to the solitary wilderness in southwestern Washington feeds my love of campfires.
On the Greek Island of Paros, I explore whether a musical improvisation master might have built up a following in the ancient Mediterranean.
My gallery of alley cats photographed from around the world.