Happy two-year wedding anniversary Nadine and Jesse! When people ask me about the most interesting place I’ve ever traveled for a wedding, I say, “Well, every place I travel could be seen as interesting. What I can tell you about is the most memorable experience I’ve ever had.”
On my way to Nadine and Jesse’s wedding on the south coast of Oaxaca state, I photographed ancient Mixtec ruins and spent a sleepless night outside the Mexico City airport. The second night without sleep I spent ten hours in the far back corner of a sixteen-passenger van winding through the mountains. That was the night my jaw started popping (still does, dental bills!), and we only had one break to stretch. We got out of the van and I was delirious from my head having bobbed semi-consciously from side to side like a dead chicken for hours on the slow switchbacks.
But when I stepped out of the van it was like a dream and it was cold. Oaxaca City is already about a mile high and it was clear that we were real high up. There was a lone cinderblock outpost and a lady and her family cooking at a grill in what was their living room, kitchen, and road house. I bought two tangerines and walked back outside and looked up. Above me I saw wispy clouds elongated by their speed whipping one by one over the top of me, they were real close. A cloud would break from the horizon down below and be gone over the top of us and out of sight in seconds. It was that quick and that fantastical, beyond the clouds I saw stars. It felt like I was both in the middle of nowhere and at the edge of the earth staring out at the universe.
I didn’t sleep the rest of the way to Huatulco and after being dropped off on a dimly lit but safe street, I got help from a taxi driver who told me that my name, Nathan, was the name of a profit. The taxi driver found me an overbooked hotel in an overbooked town where I laid, again sleepless, on the floor until a room opened up in the morning one hour later. Forty-eight hours after rising from my bed in Portland, Oregon I slept for five, ate breakfast and shot Nadine and Jesse’s wedding while connecting with awesome people who I’ve had the pleasure of seeing since; this past summer in Calgary and again next week in Mexico.
