Esteban Touma

  • Variations of Tiny Campers

    Variations of Tiny Campers

    Hey, haven’t seen your inbox or spam folder in a while, nice to be back!Are you safe? Are your hands washed? My reaction to the virus has been writing silly jokes about it by day, and thinking this is the Franz Ferdinand of WWIII by night. It’s day now, so…

  • Three Versions of Myself

    I’ve been catching up with my past recently, remembering all those different people I used to be. I remembered, for example, a fragile little 8-year-old who cried too much and loved browsing through his “Mundo de los Niños” encyclopedia. Volume 3, called “The Natural World,” had a section on the…

  • Esteban Writes from the Desert

    Esteban Writes from the Desert

    Silence and Las Vegas We’ve moved a lot in the past couple of weeks, from southeast Utah, to Nevada, to California. Some nights are windy, and others are full of nocturnal life. Sometimes we hear the rumbling of an airplane, or cars driving by on distant and not so distant…

  • Esteban Writes from Salt Lake City

    Esteban Writes from Salt Lake City

    Fossil beds and fossil fuel   We make a stop in the far northwest corner of Colorado, almost next to Utah, to visit Dinosaur National Monument, near the town of Dinosaur, to see some dinosaurs. The town and the park are there because of this quarry, the paleontology equivalent of…

  • Esteban Writes from Colorado

    Esteban Writes from Colorado

    Where we’ve been: Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest The Rockies, Rocky Mountain National Park Fort Collins, Denver, Boulder Arapaho National Forest Colorado Springs Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument Pike National Forest Salida Curecanti National Recreation Area Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Colorado National Monument Mcinnis Canyons National Conservation Area…

  • Esteban Writes from Yellowstone

    Esteban Writes from Yellowstone

    Hey, long time no see. I’ve had a couple of busy couple of weeks (as in “I’m not working and don’t want to open my computer” busy). I’ll start by letting you all know that, if you haven’t seen it, my Comedy Central set came out last week. You can watch…

  • Esteban Writes from the Black Hills

    Esteban Writes from the Black Hills

    Hyperboles and Empty Promises Signs for “Wall Drug” started appearing in Minnesota, 500 or so miles before reaching it. As we approach the town of Wall, the insistence of these billboards reach the intensity of a hungry toddler. What is Wall Drug? The signs don’t exactly say. They offer “free…

  • Death and the Minutemen in The Badlands

    Death and the Minutemen in The Badlands

    The flat plains of South Dakota suddenly descend into the Missouri river and after crossing it the horizon changes dramatically until it breaks into the Badlands. “They should actually be called ‘the pretty-cool-lands,’” I tell Autumn, who rolls her eyes at me. “You missed the opportunity to call them Badass-lands,”…

  • Esteban Writes from the Dakotas

    Esteban Writes from the Dakotas

    First Impressions of the Grasslands As we head out of Minnesota we listen to some history podcasts and learn about the Dakota war. We drive through many historical marks that tell different versions. The way history is told changes, but the desolate plains of western Minnesota appear not to. In…

  • Esteban Writes from Minnesota

    Duluth and Bob Dylan We unexpectedly end up in Duluth. I’m not sure I get this city. Is it an industrial town that moves on progress? Or a museum of old prosperity? Its streets run down from the hills, landing into the cold waters of Lake superior and the raised…