Actias selene
This entire week we have been talking about the rich fauna in the Periyar Reserve and how it overlaps into Cardamom County. Today we share with you a rare sighting of the Indian Luna Moth! We found this little guest taking shelter in our cardamom plantation waiting for night to arrive as they usually only fly in the night. Continue reading
Reserva Los Cedros, Ecuador
Sighting Of The Day
Cardamom County receives guests of all ages who are enthusiastic about trekking, hiking and bamboo rafting as well as others who just like to relax in the beautiful ambiance of our property. Our privileged location across the street from the Periyar Tiger Reserve means a lot of overlap of fauna such as birds, butterflies and even monkeys between us, although obviously we don’t have any tigers on property! Continue reading
With students, under an elephant heart plum tree at the Edible Schoolyard Photography by William Abranowicz
We never tire of listening to Alice Waters or watching for her next move. This article is ostensibly focused on an award from the Wall Street Journal, but we are most interested in the educational component of her work, which closes out the article:
…AS THE EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD moves toward its third decade, Waters aims to expand its curriculum into high school programs, like at Edible Sac High, a Sacramento charter high school—housed within the second-oldest high school west of the Mississippi—where Waters’s ideals have been incorporated. Continue reading
Rocky Mountain National Park, CO
Bullock Cart Discoveries
In the villages of India bullock cart rides are still very common modes of transportation, not only fun but also eco-friendly. Today the Raxa Collective Cardamom County team took part in the Thekkady TDPC (Tourism Destination Promotion Council) sponsored bullock cart within the local community to provide guests with a zero carbon experience that will also provide a source of income for the locals who cannot afford vehicles to exploit this large tourism market in the state. Continue reading
We do not stop enough to smell the roses, so to speak. Every day someone or something, somewhere, points to someone or something here. On our blog we link out to stories we find worthy of passing along, and likewise other bloggers point back to our blog and blog posts to spread the word. This rosy moment we would like to bring your attention to the blog where this was posted with the photo above:
This is Raxa Collective, an amazing website based in India, whose mission is to connect people and groups involved in entrepreneurial conservation projects. Continue reading
Jaipur, Rajasthan
Encased in Ash – Body Mold from Pompeii
In 79AD, Mt. Vesuvius erupted with disastrous consequences for the residents of nearby Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other cities in the Campania region. Flows of boiling mud and rock rushed down the slopes, clouds of noxious fumes billowed upwards in the wind, and thousands of tons of rock and ash rained down upon the countryside. Pliny the Younger saw the eruption and likened it to a pinus, a pine tree. This may baffle some American readers, who may be accustomed to see pine trees that taper from a wide base to a narrow point Continue reading
Sambar Deer
Where better to spot wildlife than on the lake looking to quench their thirst, cool down or save themselves from wild dogs? Here we share the documentation of the Bowden family’s experience visiting the Periyar Tiger Reserve on a boat cruise. The Periyar reservoir expands over 26 square kilometers and is the main resource of water for not only the animals in the reserve but also the state of Tamil Nadu, where it provides daily water for livelihood in 3 of its districts. Continue reading
Jake may be our guide into a future where surfing plays a larger role in Raxa Collective’s portfolio of experiential offerings. For now, he is going to paint his masterpiece at Pearl Beach and take things one step at a time from there. This clip is from a film we hope to premier in Kerala in the coming months. We have sent an invitation, formally, to Sherpas Cinema, and will keep you posted on whether and when this may happen:
This is a story of rising to the ultimate challenge. Having the courage to risk fatal exposure and the perseverance demanded on the quest for achievement. These are not solely physical feats, they are mental conquests. Continue reading
The exhibition goes well beyond that big whale you may remember in that great open space at the Museum:
Whales: Giants of the Deep explores the latest research about these marine mammals as well as the central role they have played for thousands of years in human cultures. From the traditions of New Zealand’s Maori whale riders and the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of the Pacific Northwest to the international whaling industry and the rise of laws protecting whales from commercial hunting, the exhibition traces the close connections humans and whales have shared for centuries. Continue reading
semi evergreen forest
Recent guests from Austria staying at Cardamom County shared photos of their Border Hike experience with us. The Periyar Tiger Reserve extends over 925 sq kilometers and this particular trek covers a minimum of 18km of the peripheral zone. It’s difficult not to get lost and even more difficult to spot animals in the rich flora of the reserve, hence the importance of the professionally trained forest guides. Continue reading
Los Quetzales, Panama
Nilgiri Langur
Today we have some visitors from the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Since we are bordered with the National park we have many visitors like this. Continue reading
Stanley Greene/NOOR/Redux
Greenland, photographed from a boat navigating the melt where dog sleds used to travel across the ice, October 2009
We prefer the news about solutions to challenging problems. Preferably positive news. Preferably innovations that invoke smiles. Sometimes, dismal is the only way to move forward. Thanks to the New York Review of Books, and Paul Krugman for this review:
Forty years ago a brilliant young Yale economist named William Nordhaus published a landmark paper, “The Allocation of Energy Resources,” that opened new frontiers in economic analysis.1 Nordhaus argued that to think clearly about the economics of exhaustible resources like oil and coal, it was necessary to look far into the future, to assess their value as they become more scarce—and that this look into the future necessarily involved considering not just available resources and expected future economic growth, but likely future technologies as well. Moreover, he developed a method for incorporating all of this information—resource estimates, long-run economic forecasts, and engineers’ best guesses about the costs of future technologies—into a quantitative model of energy prices over the long term. Continue reading
Photo Credit: Surfingindia.net
Oftentimes I find myself daydreaming of the saltwater breeze that accompanies the rolling bass of the heavy waves in the ocean — and I imagine those perfect waves… blue, crisp, clean and glassy, and the hollowest of tubes; peeling along the coastline in an epic demonstration of nature’s power. This is a common dream for those who understand the absolutely humbling experience of surfing; it is a burning desire and need to envelope one’s self in the soothing serenity of the water.
Scientists, like all others, are faced with puzzling ethical questions from time to time. Questions where there is no right or wrong answer, but for which “do the right thing” is the imperative. We like to think we know exactly how we would answer such a question, but sometimes the questions (or answers) are dark grey or light grey rather than black and/or white, as various characters referred to in this blog post make clear (click the image above to go to the original post):
On November 19th, science may lose a pair of dinosaurs. Preserved next to each other – and given the dramatic title the “Dueling Dinosaurs” – the tyrannosaur and ceratopsid are going up for auction at Bonham’s in New York City. The two are expected to rake in around nine million dollars, with no guarantee that the fossils will go to a museum or that their beautiful bones will even have the chance to be rigorously studied by scientists. That’s exactly why paleontologists were aghast when the auction block tyrannosaur made an appearance at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting yesterday afternoon. Continue reading
Organikos 