blog

9 posts

Shera

For two years, I lived in the Himalayan foothills at a boarding school tolerated by nature. I don’t know anywhere else that has a superior combination of leopard density and wireless download speed. The wilderness was not just on our doorstep but inside our house. Spiders and scorpions the size of s...

Read more

War in Peace

I've never known war. Never did bomb shelter drills in school, never worried about being drafted, and none of my friends have died on the battlefield. This makes me a lucky one, I know, and I'm grateful for how safe my life has been. But from what I've read, heard, and seen about war, I can see a fe...

Read more

Mountains and Temples

For most of monsoon, the walls of fog around us felt a little suffocating. In rare moments, we caught glimpses of India beyond our small community, but most of the time, we stayed on campus and adventured only to the nearest bazaar for errands....

Read more

Modern Friendship

Almost ten years ago, I got an email unlike one I'd ever gotten before. It was from my friend Patrick who had written a personal missive about the recent ups and downs of his life. In a world where people were almost competitively busy, conversations often didn't have the time or space they needed t...

Read more

Call of the Wild

Before college, I had always loved playing outside and fraternizing with the natural world, but only in the past few years have I begun really probing that. Through Pittsburgh Connections and the Explorers Club, I've gone skydiving, rock climbing, caving, horseback riding, hiking, camping, skiing, w...

Read more