I’ve been absent from Medium for the past 14 months. During much of that time I’ve been traveling and engaged in various international photo and writing projects. I returned home to Wolf Gap from India a few days prior to the advancing Coronovirus wave, and like so many others I…

If there is no single model of a natural life, then what standards can be applied to a life that is designed with nature and at a proper scale? Jennifer and I try to live a thoughtful life in Wolf Gap, and that desire extends to the land we cultivate…

My photography book about the painted towns in Shekhawati (Rajasthan), India has been released (Goff Books). Here is what a few reviewers have to say: “In this book David Zurick does what I wish more photographers would do — he describes how, and into what mood, he was approaching what…

A cross-island trail begins on the island of Rarotonga near the town of Avarua, on the northern coast, and ends at the Papua waterfall on the south coast. It’s a popular hike for adventurous tourists, but few natives bother using the trail since the coastal road makes travel so much…

The 5,600-meter Jade-Dragon-Snow-Mountain towers above the Map of the Sacred Road in Yunnan Province, China. Painted in Tibetan motifs with comic-book colors and flanked by carved totems in the style of Native Alaskans, the road is a bizarre feature in the landscape of China’s newly-manufactured Shangri La. I climbed to…

The dominant feature in Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park is a sculpture of a young black man under attack by a white policeman and a police dog. The sculpture, “Footsoldier Tribute,” by artist James Drake, is located north of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where a Ku Klux Klan bomb killed four…

I know that I am fortunate. I don’t have to visit a city park to see how I fit into things; I live in a park, and I’m not alone. I reside…

A place doesn’t need to be a monument to be a landmark. When I lost a key to my truck in Savannah, Georgia and asked a townsman for directions to the closest hardware store, he pointed me to Bradley’s Lockshop. I entered the store through a glass door and stepped…

A late season storm dropped wet snow on Wolf Gap Holler, felling trees in the forest, downing power lines, and closing roads. The weight of the snow settling onto the pines and cedars broke them at the trunks or caused them to bend in great arcs that spanned the woodland…