Author: marcuscengland
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Cuba – Day 3 – Bay of Pigs
Bahía de los Cochinos: Most Americans know it as Bay of Pigs, a place name that is usually followed by the word “invasion”, due to a failed 1961 landing operation that while manned by Cuban exiles, was organized and financed by the Central Intelligence Agency in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. It is both…
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Cuba – Day 2
Despite the time shift I had just encountered from traveling to Cuba I was up well before dawn. My unexpected first bird calling from somewhere in the darkness was a Killdeer. The second was more expected as a Barn Owl screeched while flying somewhere nearby. I saw a strange light behind the trees and thought…
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Cuba – Day 1
I opened my eyes at 4am on January 5, 2023 initially confused at where I was, then soon remembered that I was in a hotel room in Fort Lauderdale. A familiar mixture of exhaustion (from a difficult day of flying from Los Angeles the day before) and excitement consumed me as it was on that…
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Cuba – Prelude
Like many Americans, I’ve had a lifelong fascination with Cuba. At first it was the stuff we all know about US – Cuba relations with such history as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs invasion, leading to what is nearly a complete ban on travel there by Americans. Later, the wont to…
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The Virtual Swiss Alps 800: Running Motivation During a Pandemic
I am not necessarily a highly self-motivated distance runner. I love running for hours on the trails. I love being outdoors. I also love to do lots of other things outdoors. Without races to motivate me I tend to do… lots of other things that aren’t running. I had a decent slate of trail races…
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Horned Lark with California Poppies
I’m spending a little of my Sunday morning playing around with my photography workflow on an iPad Pro instead of a laptop. My experimental subject is this Horned Lark I photographed this week not far from the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. The Horned Lark is a bird of fields, low grasslands, and other open…
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Hoyt Mountain
It was Sunday, January 26, 2020. My planned outing for the day started like most new routes: sitting at my computer looking at Open Street Map (which has an amazing amount of trails digitized), trying to find a route that looked interesting enough to do, and researching recent reports on the internet from others that…
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Memories of the Pantanal: The Bridge
It was September 14, 2003. I was leading a birding tour throughout Brazil with the great Juan Mazar Barnett (who died way too young in 2012). We had just left the boat we’d spent a week on in the Rio Negro outside of Manaus and were now in the Pantanal. We had already faced many…
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On Distance Running and Goal Setting: Making the Infinite Finite
[Featured image: my wife Emily and I during the Shadow of the Giants 50K] There has been a “Ten Year Challenge” thing floating around Facebook of late. I decided to participate, which got me thinking in the larger sense about the concept of a challenge in and of itself. The “Ten Year Challenge” focuses on…
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On Becoming Intimate with Mount Hillyer
This was supposed to be my year. Until it wasn’t. Angeles Crest 100: 4 / Marcus England: 0. I came into this year’s Angeles Crest 100 feeling confident. I had completed the extremely difficult Chimera 100, the secretly challenging Javelina Jundred, then – this June – the Mohican 100 in extremely difficult conditions. Sure, I…