dirt sand road sky

I am El. Californian with a lot of Oregon in my heart. Mountain lover, ocean lover. 25 years of age. Painter and sketcher. Social worker. Activist. Bicyclist. Devotee of music and books. You know the type. Unlike everyone else. All original work unless otherwise noted.

[inotherplaces]

cliff jumping, drinking beers, watching the double rainbow over lago atitlan, on the peninsula outside of san pedro

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maíz cobs drying on a roof during corn season

[inotherplaces]

[inotherplaces]

mornings

December mornings on the streets of Xela are sharp. We walk the 5 minutes from home to the office every day by 9am. The air is chillier and the sun more blinding than expected, the sidewalks and streets hard and stonier. Hands slap small corn tortillas into shape, dogs trot around seeking scraps, trucks and mopeds swerve, baskets calmly float above bobbing heads. The OJ lady grins widely and bids goodbye with a plastic bag of juice and a straw, 5Q or about 75 cents, and a trailing “vaya….” or “a servirle…..” Traffic will not stop for you today. 

[inotherplaces]

Tommy and I drinking beer and eating tacos after a 3-day trek to Lago Atitlan

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Tangled invasive vines, choking a native species.

As a trekking guide I was able to learn about the local plants and animals, history, culture, and sociology, as much as possible. This knowledge came from books, articles, knowledge passed from previous foreign guides, and conversations with local towns-people, bus drives, truck drivers, other guatemalan guides, and locals working within the organization. Knowing these things and making connections made me feel like less of a destructive outsider, which was I fought with for my entire time living in Guatemala.

[inotherplaces]

there are a lot of very small animals in Guatemala

[inotherplaces]

“If I couldn’t be pretty, in the manner of girls, I’d decided I could be brave, like a boy or a superhero, impressing strangers not with my bravery but by how much I could endure.”

"The Next Best Thing"

[inotherplaces]

Run from what's comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.

Rumi

[inotherplaces]

I've been a lot of places

Since the places I posted here. Time to catch up, in words and pictures. Here comes my 2014, it was a doozy. In the meantime I've been collecting inspiration at mimicries.tumblr.com - where I mostly reblog from others and sometimes post originals.

[inotherplaces]

OK, the cat is lounging on the dog bed, the dog is curled up on my bed, and I am sitting on the floor with my computer. Fuck this, everything is wrong.

[fyi-foreveryouandi]

[inotherplaces]

....And in a month I'll be starting THIS again

[inotherplaces]

Lo que pasa es que we are fucking rude.

Spaniard in Guate explaining her countrywo/men accurately

[inotherplaces]

This is the view from the best nap of my life, terminal K of Benito Juarez Intl Airport in Mexico City

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Jackson, Wyoming

[inotherplaces]

Power and patriarchy can’t afford women the possibility of quest, because within these structures women are valued as agents of social preservation and not agents of social change.

- Vanessa Veselka

[thepitfallsofwanderlust]

True quest is about agency, and the capacity to be driven past one’s limits in pursuit of something greater. It’s about desire that extends beyond what we may know about who we are. It’s a test of mettle, a destiny. A man with a quest, internal or external, makes the choice at every stage about whether to endure the consequences or turn back, and that choice is imbued with heroism. Women, however, are restricted to a single tragic or fatal choice. We trace all of their failures, as well as the dangers that befall them, back to this foundational moment of sin or tragedy, instead of linking these encounters and moments in a narrative of exploration that allows for an outcome which can unite these individual choices in any heroic way. I will also admit that I think fixed narratives can be pretty dangerous. As vessels that shape our sense of self, they can be narcotic, limiting, and boring, and our development as humans is directly tied to our ability to cut across these simplistic story lines rather than be enslaved by them. Keystones in the arch under which we pass into a landscape of adolescent narcissism—that is what I think of fixed narratives. But they also keep us safe. They mark our place in society and make sure we’re seen. Therefore, the only thing more dangerous than having simplistic narratives is having no narrative at all, which is deadly

VANESSA VESELKA (via thepitfallsofwanderlust)

From her brilliant article "Green Screen: The Lack of Female Road Narratives and Why It Matters."

I thought about her article especially when hitchhiking alone for the first time last month. She's got it right.