An 'Expert' Asks A Question

One of our goals at Uncharted is to build a string of "local experts" from every little corner of the globe who can help you plan, sort out and otherwise prepare for your adventures as you're heading into their neck of the woods. As a resident of eastern Idaho nigh these 37 years, I'm supposed to be Uncharted's expert for this area. But even experts know when they're stumped.

Take the round object at the center of this photograph. Either I or my son took this photo while we were tromping around in the wilds of Hell's Half Acre, a 5,200-year-old lava flow west of Idaho Falls, Idaho, a site featured this week at www.uncharted.net. I have no idea what this thing is. A fellow explorer suggests it might be an owl pellet, though it's a bit smaller and more brightly-colored than other owl pellets I've seen. For the curious, it's somewhere between the size of a nickel and a quarter, based on the wildflowers its by. To me, it looks like a bit of chewed corncob, though I'd be hard-pressed to say who chewed it and who decided to spit it out in such a remote location.

But like all the other Uncharted experts we have -- and those we hope to find over the years to come -- we're learning. We're exploring the little nooks and crannies that make our little slices of the world slices of heaven. We hope to learn more about the places were we live so we can help other see and appreciate the beauty of this earth and decide perhaps it is indeed better to be outside roaming than inside on the Xbox.

So come with us this week to Hell's Half Acre. More importantly, sign up yourself at Uncharted.net, where you can share your local expertise.

And if anybody has any guesses as to what this mysterious object is, let us know.

Going for that Gothic Look

In Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Slartibartfast, planet designer extraordinaire, brags he won an award for designing the fjords of Norway. Assigned to design the continent of Africa for Earth Mark Two, Slartibartfast is disgusted because he won't be able to include fjords in a subtropical climate. He likes fjords, he explains, because they give a continent "a baroque feel."

Pity Slartibartfast. Had he dabbled in desert scenery, he might have discovered he enjoys the Gothic feel of the solid rock, the sheer cliffs and the massive arches of the Utah Desert.

Uncharted Explorer Xelashay certainly enjoys that Gothic look. This week she's taking us all on a journey through Utah's Coyote Gulch where with a mixture of wind, water and time, the gods or some obscure but self-satisfied planetary designer have been hard at work. Enjoy.

Uncharted Kicks A Few Rocks Down Memory Lane

One of my hobbies is listening to old time radio recordings. I have to blame my mother for that. She grew up with the likes of George Burns and Gracie Allen, Spike Jones, and an unlikely pair of Midwestern newlyweds, Fibber McGee and Molly.

Fibber McGee and his wife live at 79 Wistful Vista from 1935 to 1959, going from scratchy radio transmission to high fidelity and eventually to television. Molly constantly put up with Fibber’s wild schemes, whether he was attempting to make money without really having to work (such as the time he decided to dig an oil well in the backyard) or concocting some hair-brained solution to a problem he himself created. (He once suggested putting midgets on Fourth of July floats after it was pointed out the route he’d planned passed underneath a 6-foot-high viaduct.)

One of the sanest things McGee ever did was taking his wife on a canoeing trip where, with the soft swoosh of the paddles and an echo that knew more of the words than he did, he crooned to his lady love with the following song:

Cruisin’ down the river, on a Sunday afternoon.
The one you love, the stars above, waiting for the moon.
You and I together will plan our honeymoon,
Crusin’ down the river on a, on a Sunday afternoon.

It’s a sweet song, written in 1945 by Eily Beadell and Nell Tollerton. Blue Barron and Russ Morgan both brought it to the top of the U.S. Billboard Best Seller in Stores list as a number one single in 1949. Here’s the song:



As fortune would have it, Uncharted brings you such a Sunday afternoon feeling on Utah’s Cutler Marsh in two stories by Alan Murray and Brian Davidson. Our 2 ½ hour paddle through the marsh brought this song to mind and wrapped me in a cocoon of warmth as I recalled many an evening of sitting in the dark with Mom and Dad, listening to their old radio recordings.

For me, sound evokes powerful memories. When a new memory is mated with an old sound already linked to older memories, those memories flood out – in this case, bringing a bit of my childhood to life again as we paddled the still waters, watched the birds, and gazed up at the swallow nests built underneath the bridges. Now, swallows and goslings and sandhill cranes – and that scary moment when our canoe got stuck on the mudbar and I thought I’d have to walk us to shore – are indelibly tied in with this little ditty. So much the better for me, as I now have more memories on instant recall.

For the Uncahrted story on cutler marsh, go here.

For additional babblings from yours truly on Cutler Marsh, go here.

And explore the site. A few other staffers also posed their own photos and scribblings on Cutler Marsh. This variety exhibits one of the powers of Uncharted, aside from the x-ray vision and atomic breath. Nobody has a lock on a spot. If you want to write about or photograph something that's already on Uncharted, please do. Go ahead. Really. Each individual is an explorer in his or her own right.

Invitation to an Uncharted Retreat

Uncharted Explorers - you're invited to come join us during our annual retreat in May. Beta-testers also welcome. We are having the following events free for Explorers. Come to either just one or all of them, your choice:

May 7th, 5:00 pm: Uncharted hike and spring cleaning.

Come with us to enjoy a spring hike and at the same time we will do spring cleaning of the trails we enjoy so much. If you can make it to Cache Valley come join us at Green Canyon at 5pm. If you're somewhere else, join us in the effort by going to your favorite local trail any time on Thursday and invite other explorers and friends to come along to give the trail some TLC.


May 8th, 2:30 - 4:00 pm: Photography workshop - "Shooting Photos with What You Have"

Where: Kensington Place Clubhouse- http://tinyurl.com/c2krq4 * Park on the street on 1800 N, clubhouse is on east side of tennis court.

What: Uncharted's Executive Director Alan Murray, long-time photojournalist and photo editor, will be teaching a photojournalism workshop. The seminar, free to Uncharted Explorers, will discuss what all digital cameras have in common and how to use those components to take dynamic photos. Techniques will also be presented on how to shoot photos that will be more likely to be selected for publication on Uncharted's homepage or the cover of Uncharted Magazine. A question and answer session will follow the seminar.


May 9th, 12:00 noon: International flavors lunch.

Where: Kensington Place Clubhouse- http://tinyurl.com/c2krq4 * Park on the street on 1800 N, clubhouse is on east side of tennis court.

What: Come mingle with Uncharted's staff and other Explorers and dig into some great flavors from all over the world. Also share your own international culinary skills, if you feel so inclined, by bringing something to add to the potluck!

** If you would like to come to any of the events, please visit our Facebook event page and mark yourself as attending so we know you're coming...or RSVP by replying to this thread with your name and how many people are coming. We will be keeping info updated on the Facebook event page and this thread**

Uncharted Brings You the Universe

Part of our goal at Uncharted is to provide, through our stories and photos, a burning desire in those who read and view what we produce to replicate those experiences in their own lives. Our update this weekend is a prime example of a story and photo package offering just that.

Take me, for instance. Long have I harbored the desire to be an astronomer. When I was eight years old, Carl Sagan's Cosmos debuted on television. Color me mesmerized. For weeks. I watched those shows. I borrowed every book from the library on astronomy. I even wrote a fan letter to Carl Sagan at Cornell University, and he wrote back, advising me to work hard on my math skills if I wanted to be an astronomer like him.

Alas, it was not to be. A straight line of Cs in algebra -- despite my efforts to learn it better than that -- dashed my hopes. My only consolation came through geometry, where I was able to understand the stuff enough to pull As. So I became a writer instead.

Then I read Joseph Burkhead's story on his adventure at Arizona's Kitt Peak Observatory, where he got to go to the top of that sacred mountain and actually have astronomers at his elbow -- both elbows -- unlocking the secrets of the cosmos. Suddenly, it all came back -- right to replaying that eerie Vangelis theme music in my head, from Sagan's television series.

So click here quickly and begin to read. And if you're a Cosmos fan like I am, hit Hulu.com and queue up one of the old shows. Listen to Vangelis' opening theme as you read Joseph's story. That cosmic desire will all come back to you.

I'm leaving now. Going outside to stare at the stars.

Uncharted Goes Underground

One of the things I enjoy the most about writing and taking photos for Uncharted is that I get to show off some of the wonderful places that make eastern Idaho such a fantastic place to explore. 17-Mile Cave is one of those places.

The cave is a mix of the ancient and modern. Ancient, because it's a remnant of Idaho's volcanic era, a time that saw volcanoes sprouting from the desert, great cracks opening in the Earth oozing lava and, of course, underwater rivers of lava forming caves and tubes under the upper crust, then draining, leaving a place for moderns like us to plow underground. And modern, because the cave is filled with graffiti, has a chamber large enough to host touch football games and is uncomplicated enough to allow amateur cave explorers a place to go without worrying about getting lost.

So, stop reading this and go on to read about 17-Mile Cave. Enjoy.

Finally: Proof that I work.

I don't have too many photos of myself working. That's what happens when you're most often behind the camera. But this one, taken by Uncharted Photo Assistant John Milligan, is definitely my favorite.

Covering the Holi Festival of Color last weekend at the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah, was one of the more unusual assignments I've photographed and written about. Over 15,000 people packed the hillside just below the temple waiting to throw bags of powdered dust into the air and all over each other.

Most of the battle for good photojournalism is simply placing yourself in the right place and waiting for the right moment. Whenever I cover a story, I'm always looking to position myself in such a way as to ensure that I'm ready when the climax of the event goes down.

I positioned myself at what seemed to be the focal point, a pile of dry wood with a plastic witch-like figurine sitting on the top, ready to be burned. As it turns out, the figurine was an effigy of the demoness Holika, for whom the Holi Festival of Color derives its name. I figured everyone's attention would be on the fire, at least for the first few seconds. After that, you just need to run with what happens.

So when the bonfire was lit and people began throwing colored flour all over the place, you could barely see a thing. The plastic bags covering my cameras started falling off and for moments, here and there, it was hard to breathe. The fire was so hot that it started to burn even though I was almost 15 feet away. Before I knew it, I was sandwiched in the middle of thousands of people with barely any room to move, wishing I had a wider angle lens.

But there was something exhilarating about being in the middle of it all, even covered head to toe in colored powder. At Uncharted ,we try to promote a philosophy of "Explore. Live. Feel." That means when we cover a story, we immerse ourselves in it. We want to show you what it was like to be there. I hope I achieved that with this story. In any case, events like these make me excited to get out there and do more stories and photos for Uncharted.

Alan Murray is executive director of Uncharted. He likes sea horses and snowshoes, and frequently has the urge to leave the country. To contact Alan, feel free to write to alan@uncharted.net.