Author: Ms. R.

With an enormous single prayer hall inside, Atumashi Monastery is also known as the “Incomparable Monastery,” due to its sheer size. Atumashi Monastery is considered one of the largest religious buildings in Mandalay. The gigantic gold and white monastery was constructed by King Mindon in 1857. The monastery was once home to an image of Buddha that contained a massive diamond. The diamond was brought by the Governor of Rakhine from western Burma and presented to King Bodawpaya. However, in……

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In 1829, when the celebrated Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai was almost 70 years old, he created more than 100 drawings of a dazzling array of subjects: playful cats, serene landscapes, even severed heads. Hokusai’s fame continued to grow after his death in 1849, and the suite of small, elaborate drawings was last purchased a century later, at a Paris auction in 1948. Then it disappeared from the public eye. Now, a total of 103 drawings have resurfaced. According to……

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Brooklyn has its fair share of Revolutionary War monuments, most commemorating battles fought and those that died in the conflict. The Dongan Oak Marker is unusual in that it marks the loss of a tree in the service of the patriots.  In 1776, the Dongan Oak was one of the tallest trees in the area and was nearly 100 years old. The tree had been previously noted by Governor Dongan as a border marker between the villages of Brooklyn and……

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This hidden mountain biking and hiking destination is located just outside of Joshua Tree National Park. The Desert View Conservation Area, also known by the Bureau of Land Management as “Section 6,” is currently managed by the San Bernardino County Special Districts Department. The area was originally intended to become a robust recreation park area similar to Joshua Tree National Park. However, the local Joshua Tree community instead wanted to preserve the 605 acres of natural desert habitat for desert……

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Canals made Ohio in the early 19th century the way railroads would later make the West. Water routes from Lake Erie to the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico made it possible for towns and cities to spring up from frontier forests as freight and, by extension, wealth began circulating through the state. Most of those canals are long gone, but their ruins still dot the Ohio landscape in many places, including the remnants of a lock at the……

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Australia’s famous Nullarbor Plain is a lonely, eerie place. Flat and desolate, it draws the adventurous, the nomadic … the strange. Those who have crossed its 1,030 miles have reported UFOs hovering in the sky, and the mysterious Min Min lights dancing on the horizon. In the last few years, however, a growing number of reports have come in of odd, humanoid creatures living along the Nullarbor’s treacherous 90 Mile Straight—creatures so well organized and intelligent that they have……

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By the time the recent spate of wildfires began scorching Oregon and fouling the air with smoke, Kassandra Rippee, like most of us, already had a lot of practice wearing masks. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, she has worn one whenever she leaves the house. Now, as fires continue to cough smoke across America’s West Coast, those cloth masks just don’t seem to cut it. The air is sometimes so thick that wandering around feels like being in white-out conditions,……

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For paddlers in Minnesota’s million-acre-plus Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a panorama of lakes and trees stretches as far as the eye can see. Bald eagles, swans, and loons patrol the BWCAW’s waters, deer, bear, and the occasional moose ramble its woods, and its pristine lakes teem with walleye, northern pike, and bass. What you seldom see are other people. Yet this is where Dorothy Molter lived from 1934 to 1986. On the Isle of Pines in Knife Lake,……

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