Tag Archives: nature Is there anything more uplifting than a walk in the woods with the sounds of falling water? The short walk from my accommodation outside the little village of Flåm in southwestern Norway, along the Flåmselvi (Moldåni) River, past bucolic fields and wooden farm houses, into a birch forest and up a mountainside to views over […]  Hocking Hills State Park, in the American state of Ohio, comprises 2,356 acres (9.53 km2) of caves, waterfalls, trees, and hiking trails. The park is known for the dramatic geologic features that, over the aeons, have carved themselves into the surrounding Black Hand Sandstone. Black Hand Sandstone is the name given to an early Mississippian […]  “Funiculì, Funiculà!” I find it impossible not to sing the popular Neapolitan tune – at least in my head – whenever I ride a funicular railway. The song was composed in 1880 to commemorate the then-new funicular track up Mount Vesuvius. Cable railway systems, designed for steep slopes, have been in use since the 1820s […]  Once upon a time, our waters were sapphire blue, emerald green, and foaming diamond white. Once upon a time, our sands were pristine shades of white and yellow. Once upon a time, we could walk among the she-oaks, the wattle, the Banksia, and the eucalypts. Once upon a time … before our spectacular conflagrations razed communities, […]  The desert is a magically beautiful place. It is also unforgiving. You have to be tough to forge a life in these hostile, barren expanses where almost no precipitation falls. Bedouin or “desert people” – from the Arabic badawī – have made the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East their home for thousands of years. Even […] |
|
