A week after I returned from Haida Gwaii, British Columbia I found wood shavings on the floor of my Brooklyn apartment.  Ok, my wife found them. I put them there. I had been teaching myself to carve while she ran errands. “What in the world are you doing?” she asked. “I’m whittling.” “Whittling?” “Yeah, whittling. I’m teaching myself to carve like the guys in Haida Gwaii.” I took another notch out of the wood in… Read More

I have read two books more than once—Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne and a double feature of The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London. Both take me to incredible places.  Both make me dream.  For this, my sixth trip to Haida Gwaii, an archipelago some 30 miles west of British Columbia, I packed the Jack London.  It seemed fitting for the long flights across… Read More

My wife bought this empty, ornate frame for $20.  We planned to fill it with something interesting.  Maybe a photo.  Maybe a painting.  Maybe cork board so we could tack up photos and notes.  We had loads of ideas, but the frame sat empty for weeks.  While pushing it aside to grab my photo equipment for spring shots of the Philadelphia Art Museum, I finally thought of a way to get our… Read More

Exploring the British Columbian Archipelago’s Most Remote Sacred Site By Marc Cappelletti I am walking in the footsteps of chiefs and carvers, warriors and weavers, shamans and slaves; people as connected to the land as the very trees from which they once made their homes.  The ground is soft.  It is sacred.  And it lies at the edge of the world—Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. I am standing on shore at the ancient village… Read More