McDonald's and Douglas-firs (photograph by Sarah West)

The form or look of the tree arises from annually repeated patterns of branching, elongation, thickening, and death.
                                                                                                                              — Brayton F. Wilson, The Growing Tree

While it’s easy enough to take the virtues of street and park trees for granted — the shade they cast, the vaulted tunnels and cathedrals they form—those giants are, generally, beloved. Not so the trees of the American sprawl-spaces: strip malls and unfinished subdivisions and warehouse outskirts and truck cities. You can go years without truly seeing them, and yet there they are: The prim Boxelders on the little curbed islands in the Home Depot parking lot. The flank of twisted Shore Pines along the freeway onramp. The toppled Sweetgum branch pinning an Arby’s bag on the median grass of the bus stop.  

These forgotten or overlooked trees engage with us on multiple levels, whether we notice or not; they’re full of stories. Many, obviously, were planted — planted to soften a massive hardscape, arrest fresh-bared soil, comply with municipal regulations. A few might be legacy trees from pre-sprawl farmland or prairie copses. Others colonize the sprawl-scape via a bird’s gut or a propitious breeze.

Many we call “exotics,” coming of evolutionary age in some faraway place and planted here deliberately for their beauty or utility, or sprung up as opportunistic feral invaders. “Native” trees in sprawl-space landscaping, though, have particular power, harmonizing with wild fellows in the city hinterland. Winter storms in the Pacific Northwest set shopping mall Douglas-firs swaying in remote concert with free-growing ones in the backdrop foothills. Royal Palms squaring off Miami gas stations call to mind those lording in a magnificent supercanopy over jungle hammocks a few dozen miles away. These biological kinships give some sense of continuity to sprawl, otherwise so unapologetically out-of-place.

However manicured they are, sprawl-scape trees always seem a bit lonesome — reflecting, I guess, the inherent lonesomeness of their surroundings. Lonely is the shadow the Red Maple casts all night in the glare of a warehouse security light, the same glow that fools the tree into delayed displays of autumn foliage. Heavy spring rain lingers on the row of Scots Pines at the rest stop, their needle sprays glistening and dancing against the chrome bloodstream of the interstate. The Cabbage Palm edging the McDonald’s drive-thru has tarnished fans and rugged bootjacks daily blasted with exhaust.

Palm trees at a Florida strip mall (photograph by Daniel Oines/Flickr)

Windmill Palm at the strip mall (photograph by Ethan Shaw)

Tree in a Houston parking lot (photograph by HF5523/Wikimedia)

Like a falcon nailing a pigeon over Denny’s or a brushfire erupting in the brambles by the railroad tracks, these sprawl-scape trees remind us that even the most abused and disparaged plot of land is, nonetheless, a real, honest-to-goodness ecosystem. That small Hawthorn in the Walmart parking lot is busily pulling moisture from the sky and phosphorus from the soil, still offering its rough bark for the perches of lichen and the murderous booby-traps of spiders. Marooned amid dollar stores and car washes, a grove of firs still drips with fog, swallows wind, and becomes a grand nighttime roost for winter crows.

Because a strip mall doesn’t inspire the same kind of reverence as a snow-clad mountain range or giant waterfall, we forget it’s as much a part of the planetary framework as anywhere else. Yes, it’s a ravaged piece of countryside, with mostly impervious surfaces and oil puddles and monstrously consumptive appliances. But the ground it occupies is still the skin of the Earth: bedrock that has done its time under the sea or in a volcano’s throat; sediment that’s been washed in by floodwaters or shed off a glacial snout. As the Romans would say, there’s still a “genius” of this spot, an authentic revelation of the world’s vital energy.

New friends and dear sweet old tree ghosts
here we are again. Enjoy the day.
— Gary Snyder, Danger on Peaks (from “Enjoy the Day”)

The soul of a place is unlikely to express itself in commercial or industrial infrastructure that’s been carbon-copied all over the country. By contrast, a tree — in decades-long conversation with the site’s soil, sunlight, wind, moisture, and animals — manifests the essential spirit of the landscape. Its ultimate form stems not only from a genetic blueprint, but also the special conditions and events of its location, and thereby encodes history and longterm pattern.

The sprawl-scape tree bridges deep time and the neurotic pace of modern development and redevelopment. Tapping soil built over millennia, it endures overzealous pruning to accommodate power lines, roots severed by roadwork, and the scorch of spun-up road salt. Its canopy memorizes the geography of airflow through the canyons of the big-box stores. Its lopsided figure has duly logged the ice storm of forty years ago.

Trees buck against the ugliest hallmarks of sprawl. In these homogenized, willfully out-of-context realms, they’re biological totems. They summon at once the landscapes and eras of their evolutionary heritage and the here-and-now wastes they presently inhabit. They sing to our blood, forged as it was in long-ago forests and then savannas. They look good at sunset and heaving in a gale. And through them we may pay a little respect to a piece of turf we’ve otherwise pillaged, remembering that the Earth itself never dies.

Autumn in a Portland parking lot (photograph by Fabio Mascarenhas/Flickr)

Twisted sumacs in an urban median (photograph by Sarah West)

Astana city center (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Most people living in the western world know surprisingly little about Kazakhstan. Surprising, considering this Eurasian country ranks as the ninth largest nation on the planet. Yet it has a regional population of just 17 million, which is less than some cities and comparatively sparse for such a vast landmass. Kazakhstan nevertheless has an ancient and fascinating history. Did you know, for example, that these lands are believed to be the evolutionary birthplace of the apple? 

In recent years, Kazakhstan has become better known in conspiracy circles for its dazzling new capital, Astana. The internet abounds with theories that highlight the rich thread of occult symbolism which seemingly runs through Astana’s futuristic architecture. Some of the more extravagant theories name it an Illuminati-funded, future Asian capital of the coming “New World Order.” 

It’s easy to dismiss such conspiracy talk outright; but, for the sake of argument, we'll take a look through some of the key points which form the basis of the assumption. First though, an introduction to the birth of the current Kazakh capital.

Supposed symbolism in Astana's central plaza (photograph via David Icke)

The White Tomb

Astana is one of the world’s youngest cities. As late as 1997, the Kazakh capital was at Almaty, a city in the southeast, not far from the border with China. The official reasons for the move included seismic instability, volatile borderlands, and limited room for expansion, but it isn’t hard to guess at other, more patriotic motivations for the shift.

The "Ak Orda" presidential palace (photograph by Darmon Richter)

A statue celebrating Kazakh national identity (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Kazakhstan left the Soviet Union in 1990. While other nations of the former-USSR struggled on through what would become (for many) a decade of economic depression, the Kazakhs, meanwhile, struck oil. The 1991 discovery of rich oil reserves in the nation’s Caspian region invigorated the newly-independent country, and laid the foundations for what would become a culture of extravagance. Many observers have suggested that the change of capital was as much a declaration of national pride and independence as it was a purely pragmatic move.

Astana was built at incredible speeds, transforming the northern town of Ak Mola (the “White Tomb”) into a bizarre, dizzying metropolis. No expense was spared when it came to city planning; world-class architects (such as Britain’s Sir Norman Foster and Japan’s Kisho Kurokawa) were hired for a project that would become a multi-billion dollar exercise in futurism.

Today, the city remains unfinished. Many of its more elaborate zones and structures are complete, but with a large portion of its residential areas still in development, Astana remains low on human population. To this day, many government officials still commute to work by flying from the former capital at Almaty. At times, and particularly in some districts, it can feel like a ghost town. Such sensations only add to the effect of Astana's peculiar blend of architectural styles.

For the conspiracy theorists however, it is the layout, the bare bones of this city, which is cited as the most symbolically significant.

Astana's "Khan Shatyr" shopping and entertainment complex (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Astana’s Masonic Temple

Astana’s city center is as ripe with apparent symbolism as anything you’ll see. A paved promenade runs down the central Nurzhol Bulevard, from the otherworldly Khan Shatyr shopping center in the west, to the presidential palace in the east. The palace — named “Ak Orda” — is the official seat of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, and stands flanked on either side by towering golden pillars.

Nurzhol Bulevard, Astana (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Stylized sketch of the typical layout for a masonic temple

If the layout doesn't already remind you of something, then consider the basic form of a masonic temple: an altar placed in the center accompanied by twin pillars (“Joachim" and “Boaz”), while the Grand Master sits on a throne positioned in the east.

So far, so suspicious. 

Added to that is the decorative Bayterek Tower, positioned at the heart of Astana’s central plaza. Its design was intended to illustrate an old Kazakh myth — the story of Samruk, "the magical bird of happiness," which appears (under varying names) as a recurring fiction throughout the Turkic, Persian, Armenian, and even Byzantine traditions. The Bayterek Tower was designed to symbolize the bird’s golden egg, balanced between the branches of the tree of life.

The conspiracy theorists, however, have likened the Bayterek to a sun altar. Many conservative Christians are quick to draw parallels between sun worship and the worship of Lucifer, the “morning star.” At the very least, sun worship is recognized as a decidedly pagan pastime — and while links to masonic or Illuminati lore may be tenuous at best, the tower's position in the west — the place of the setting sun — has nevertheless caused excited discussion in countless conspiracy forums.

The Bayterek Tower (photograph by Darmon Richter)

At the more extreme end of the conspiracy-spectrum are those who suggest that this magnified "temple" layout might allow for occult workings on a grand scale. As elaborate as such a scheme may sound, the concept of incorporating unwitting neophytes into city-sized ritualistic workings is not a new one. Take, for example, the similar claims made about the ceremonial passage of boats beneath London's Tower Bridge during the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Pageant, or even the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Those looking for clues (or confirmation) can turn their attention to the city's annual carnival, Astana Day. Perhaps there's some esoteric significance to the arrangement of floats, or the order in which performers pass between the golden pillars. For now though, our focus here remains with the city's steel and concrete; the physical framework on which such theories have been sculpted.

The Eye in the Pyramid

Another Kazakh landmark raising eyebrows in conspiracy forums is the “Palace of Peace and Reconciliation.” Situated across the river from the Ak Orda Palace, on the edge of the city center, this large pyramid serves as a meeting place for the Kazakh congress. Its lower level contains a concert hall, while a middle floor hosts a large, circular (sun?) table around which affairs of state are decided. In its apex, a glass-walled mini-pyramid, an observation deck provides a 360-degree view of the city.

The Palace of Peace and Reconciliation (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Rising to a height of 77 meters, the pyramid certainly casts a striking silhouette on the city skyline; though in design, perhaps it need be considered no more bizarre than the Las Vegas Luxor, the Louvre in Paris, or in fact any of the world’s other great modern pyramids.

Nevertheless, certain theorists have suggested that the sun and dove motifs which decorate the Kazakh pyramid’s apex stand respectively for Satan, and for the superficial peace of a planet united beneath a New World Order.

However President Nazarbayev himself — the supposed “eye in the pyramid” — seems an unlikely choice as an Illuminati pawn. A lifelong communist, Nazarbayev has held positions in Soviet government since 1962, a political regime which opposed freemasonry at every opportunity. Meanwhile the accusations of corruption, money laundering, assassination plots, and abuse of human rights which have plagued Nazarbayev's tenure since he took control of an independent Kazakhstan in 1990, seem utterly irreconcilable with the sophisticated, discreet, and shadowy nature of the hypothetical “Illuminati” of conspiracy theories. 

Rather, all signs seem to point to a bid for recognition; a grand, imposing statement of independence, of wealth, and of national identity.

President Nazarbayev on a billboard in Almaty (photograph by Darmon Richter)

The presidential palace (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Final Verdict

So is Astana really an Illuminati stronghold? Is it the intended future capital of New World Order Asia? 

It’s hard to accept that knowledgeable and experienced architects such as Sir Norman Foster (previously responsible for New York’s Hearst Tower, the restored Reichstag building in Berlin, Hong Kong International Airport, and a string of London constructions including the Millennium Bridge, the Gherkin, and Wembley Stadium) could have missed the clear design parallels between Astana city center and pretty much every masonic temple ever. Logic dictates that this is no accident. 

However by applying Occam’s razor to the question, is it more likely that this signifies a sinister occult connection, or rather, a nod to the classics? Throughout Astana there are designs which echo ideas from Greek, Egyptian, Arabic, and Persian traditions. Throwing masonic themes into the mix as well, need be no more than symptomatic of a city designed to illustrate the future using the recycled selected highlights of the past. 

Office buildings in the heart of Astana (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Another argument against the Illuminati theory lies in the quality of the construction work itself. Seen up close, many of Astana's buildings are in poor shape. As construction continues throughout the city, those older buildings now approaching 15 years of age have been denied necessary maintenance and repairs. The harsh local climate does no favors to concrete, either — ranging from an average of 80°F in summer, down to 50 below in the coldest months.

The impression gained from taking a tour of Astana then, from exploring the city in depth and examining buildings both inside and out, is one of superficial charm. This is a metropolis built to impress — not a stronghold designed to survive world wars in order to rise as a future power center in accordance with some shady elitist plot.

Clearly, however, such reasonable deductions will never satisfy everyone; and for a confirmed conspiracy theorist — anyone out to prove that the world is in fact manipulated by the Freemasons / Illuminati / Lizard-people — Astana certainly provides a lot of material to get one’s teeth into.

Fireworks over Khan Shatyr (photograph via khanshatyr.com)

The interior of Khan Shatyr (photograph via khanshatyr.com)

Astana center with Bayterek Tower (photograph by Ken and Nyetta/Wikimedia)

Crypt at Center Church on the Green (all photographs by the author)

There's no shortage of churches with crypts. However, while these are on the whole designed with the building. there's one place where something much more unusual happened: the church was built right over a cemetery which it consumed as its crypt. 

The Crypt at Center Church on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut, is situated among three churches on the New Haven Green, a grassy area downtown that was part of colonist John Brockett's Puritan city planning for an ideal spiritual city. The Green was given the right dimensions to hold 144,000 people — the number they believed would be saved in the Second Coming of Christ. Judgment Day still hasn't arrived, and an economic downturn of recent years makes this area less divine and more downtrodden. But go back to the 17th century, and it was bustling, including as a burial ground. 

Yet in true Poltergeist-fashion, when in the 1820s the graveyard was relocated to the new Grove Street Cemetery, only the headstones were moved. By some estimates there are between 5,000 to 10,000 souls still buried below the Green, although one was disturbed during 2012's Hurricane Sandy when a tree was dislodged from the ground, and a skeleton found coiled in the roots. Specifically, a skull was spotted just before Halloween with its jaw swung open as if in a silent howl, while a spine and rib cage remained attached. 

This is all to say that the Center Church on the Green crypt is just a section of a secret necropolis that's mostly forgotten. Recently the New York Obscura Society visited the crypt as part of our road trip to New Haven. Entering the church, you see a blazing white interior with fascinating historic details like the pew used by Eli Whitney. Marble engravings above the entrance hint at something more, reading: "this edifice covers the remains of the persons whose names are inscribed upon these tablets."

Take a creaking, narrow staircase downstairs, and you're suddenly in a colonial cemetery, the 137 gravestones still in their original places, the ceiling low above your head. In a curious decision, when the church was built around 1814, it was held up on pillars above this cemetery and then dirt packed in around it to make it even with the Green. Headstones carved with skulls and flying souls are embedded in a brick floor — added in 1990 to replace a concrete floor that was causing moisture issues, which had early in the 20th century been poured over the dirt. The oldest is from 1687, the latest is from 1812. There are a few wolf tables crowding the room, which are rectangular tombs for protecting shallow graves from disturbance (including wolves). And the cemetery does seem packed to its top soil with hundreds of remains. Reportedly, when in recent years the church tried to lower the floor a bit, it was just three inches down that a child's grave was revealed.

The Center Church on the Green is believed to be the only church constructed right on top of a colonial cemetery, and remains a quiet reminder on the Green that this public space is also a mass grave. From April to October on Thursdays to Saturdays, there are free tours of the crypt. You can also find some of the stories of the graves at the Tales from the Crypt blog kept by the Center Church Crypt, which also offers morbid facts of the week on their Facebook.

All this month we're celebrating 31 Days of Halloween with real tales of the macabre and strange. For even more, check out our spooky stories from 2011 and 2013.

Undulatus asperatus(photograph by Agathman via Wikimedia Commons)

In an attempt to codify cloud vocabulary and aid in weather prediction, the World Meteorological Association (WMO) published the first International Cloud Atlas in 1896. The Atlas divides clouds into 10 genus, 26 species, and 31 varieties, and includes important tips for cloud identification as well as appropriately whimsical descriptions — cloud species range from praecipitatio, "to fall (down a precipice)" to castellanus, "a castle of a fortified town." Though many updates and new editions have been published since, no new cloud types have been added to the Atlas since cirrus intortus ("an entangled lock of hair") was added in 1951. Until now. 

Undulatus asperatus (photograph by Flickr user B.J. Bumgarner)

In 2005 Gavin Pretor-Pinney, a writer, documentary producer, and former absinthe importer, founded the Cloud Appreciation Society, whose delightful manifesto states, in part, "We believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them." In addition to sharing cloud news and participating in citizen sky science, the Society publishes a vast crowdsourced gallery of cloud photographs. It was while editing selections for the gallery that Pretor-Pinney came upon several instances of what he would call undulatus asperatus ("turbulent undulation"): a menacing, roiling cloud that he believed was unlike any known variety. He describes the appearance of the clouds as distinct from the standard undulatus: "more confused — as if you were underneath the water looking up toward the surface when the sea is particularly disturbed and chaotic." 

Undulatus asperatus (photograph by Flickr user nik gaffney)

In order to support the need for a new classification, Pretor-Pinney worked with a graduate student at the University of Reading, Graeme Anderson, who wrote his dissertation on the undulatus asperatus. Mainstream meteorological organizations agree that these clouds are distinct: according to Weather.com, they "occur when enough atmospheric instability, or rising air, is available to create widespread cloud cover, as well as wind shear and turbulence, which creates the wavy, rough sea-like visual effect." In 2009, Pretor-Pinney submitted the cloud to the World Meteorological Association for consideration.

Undulatus asperatus (photograph by Flickr user Luis Argerich)

The WMO has not yet confirmed whether the new cloud will be officially added, but it looks likely: in 2013 a task team assigned to the case has recommended it for inclusion. The next edition of the Atlas is slated for release sometime in 2015. 

Undulatus asperatus (photograph by Flickr user Fullswing)

Marimo in Lake Akan (photograph by Andy king50/Wikimedia)

Endangered in Iceland, celebrated in Japan, and recently spotted for the first time on a beach in Sydney, lake balls, a rare round formation of a common type of algae, face an uncertain future.

Known by many names — kúluskítur ("round shit") in Icelandic, torasampe ("marsh monster") in Ainu Japanese, and Aegagropila ("goat hair") in Greek — these velvety spheres are only found in a few places in the world, primarily Lake Akan in Japan, Lake Mývatn in Iceland, and Lake Svityaz in the Ukraine. There are several theories for why the unique formations occur: some scientists think the shape protects the balls from predatory fish, while a group of researchers in Japan found that it may help the balls roll back into the water to keep from drying out if they get washed ashore. Yet another idea is that the underwater rotation allows the sun to photosynthesize all sides of the fuzzy green balls. 

Marimo balls in a river (photograph by mobile_gnome/Flickr)

This latter theory may also explain why lake balls are on a decline worldwide, but most drastically in Iceland: Although in 2000 there were tens of millions of balls in Lake Mývatn, decades of mining have filled the lake with phosphorous and nitrous, drastically increasing the bacteria that feeds on those nutrients and preventing sunlight from filtering down to the lake's bottom. In addition, the sediment stirred up on the lake floor has buried many of the balls, further depriving them of sunlight and suffocating them. By mid-2014, the lake ball colony in Lake Mývatn was all but gone, though Dr. Isamu Wakana, an algae expert from Japan, and Árni Einarsson, the director of the Nature Research Institute at Lake Mývatn, are working to develop ways to rebalance the lake's nutrients in order to foster a healthier environment for the reintroduction of the balls. 

Meanwhile, in Japan the marimo ("ball seaweed") are famous and revered — they've been an official Japanese National Treasure since 1921, and since 1950 the indigenous Ainu have held an annual Marimo Festival in Hokkaidō, which combines aspects of traditional Ainu "sending off" ceremonies with a focus on environmental conservation. The marimo have also become quite commercialized around Lake Akan, with area souvenir shops filled with green-ball-patterned boxers, keychains, and baby clothes. There's also a marimo postage stamps, an anime character named Mizumori Amane covered in the balls, and even a (rather creepy) anthropomorphized toy, Marimokkori, whose name is a pun combining marimo with the Japanese slang term for, well, hard-on. 

Marimo toys (photograph by Nesnad/Wikimedia)

Although it may be too late for Iceland's lake balls — Dr. Einarsson wrote a paper entitled "The lake balls of Mývatn: In memoriam" [PDF] in May 2014 — Japan's marimo are thriving after decades of focused conservation. Since marimo have a long life if properly cared for, there's hope for them to last for a long time to come.

Marimo toy (photograph by duke.yuin/Flickr) 

Tunnel of Love, Ukraine (photograph by Serhei/Wikimedia)

Around the world stunning passageways have grown from nature. These tree tunnels can take decades to form, but when the branches arch over in a botanical architecture it can be transporting. Here are nine of our favorite tree tunnels, where you can walk under the flora in a light dappled through leaves and flowers. 

TUNNEL OF LOVE
Klevan, Ukraine

photograph by serhei/panoramio

The Tunnel of Love outside of Klevan, Ukraine, has three kilometers of train tracks enclosed by vivid greenery. The train runs wood to a factory, a perhaps slightly ironic juxtaposition, but visitors can also meander through the lush setting on foot. 

photograph by Людмила Голуб/Wikimedia

WISTERIA TUNNEL
Yahatahigashi Ward, Japan

photograph by Binary cse/Flickr

Located at the Kawachi Fuji Gardens in Kitakyushu, Japan, the Wisteria Tunnel is a trellised passageway where multicolored flowers hang down over the heads of visitors. However, hit it at the wrong time and those blooms are just a contorted shade of bare branches.   

DARK HEDGES
Ballymoney, Ireland

photograph by Lindy Buckley/Flickr

Gloomily leading the way to the manor home of the Stuart family, the Dark Hedges in Ireland are a row of beech trees planted back in the 18th century. They now lean ominously over the road in a tunnel of branches. Not surprisingly they've even got their own ghost legend — the Grey Lady who is said to appear in the shadows. 

photograph by Kyle Monahan/Flickr

LABURNUM TUNNEL
Bodnant Gardens, Wales

photograph by Adam Clark/Flickr

Japan may be the capital of beautiful wisteria tunnels, but the Bodnant Garden in Wales has one to stand with the rest. The 55-meter long Laburnum Arch drapes its yellow blossoms in late spring in a stunning golden corridor. 

photograph by Adam Clark/Flickr

OAK ALLEY PLANTATION
Vacherie, Louisiana

photograph by Alberto Cabello/Flickr

Dating to the 19th century, the Oak Alley Plantation on the Mississippi River in Louisiana has as its namesake a path of live oaks around 800 feet long. The towering trees lead right up to the Greek Revival house at the historic destination's center. 

photograph by Prayitno/Flickr

YEW TUNNEL
Aberglasney Gardens, Wales

photograph by Lisa Shambrook/Flickr

The Yew Tunnel at Aberglasney Gardens in Wales is a surreal sight of old trees planted in the 18th century knotted together in an otherworldly passageway. As the Aberglasney website explains: "it is hard to count how many separate trees commingle in the vast mass of this venerable growing gallery."

photograph by Gareth Lovering/Flickr

GREAT WISTERIA
Ashikaga Flower Park, Japan

photograph by Takashi Hososhima/Flickr

Just one massive wisteria tree, believed to be nearly 150 years old, provides a huge canopy of purplish blue flowers at the Ashikaga Flower Park in Japan. The branches are suspended on trellises into a stunning space that starts to come to life in May. 

photograph by Hetarllen Mumriken/Flickr

PARQUE FRANCISCO ALVARADO
Zarcero, Costa Rica

photograph by Vytautas Šėrys/Flickr

Since the 1960s strange topiaries have been carved in the center of Zarcero, Costa Rica, at the Parque Francisco Alvarado. This includes a tunnel of 16 arches leading right up to the Iglesia de San Rafael, along with dinosaurs, animals, and even Jesus sculpted from the plants. 

photograph by Vytautas Šėrys/Flickr

MANGROVE TUNNEL
Roatan, Honduras

photograph by Woody Hibbard/Flickr

The canals carved into the fishing community of Roatan, Hondurus, are shaded by mangrove trees, their roots clawing out into the water. Small boats offer visitors the chance to experience these tunnels, and as a bonus, one even leads to an Iguana Farm. 

photograph by Max Kueng/Flickr

Explore more extraordinary flora on Atlas Obscura >

One of the "corpse theatre" stagings of the 19th century (all images courtesy Archives of the Roman National History Society)

When staging representations of biblical themes for education and entertainment, many times it was easier for the religious orders of the 19th century to just use the corpses they had on hand to fill the roles of the dead. Elizabeth Harper of All the Saints You Should Know (and a regular Atlas Obscura contributor) recently shared some these rare "corpse theatre" photographs from the Archives of the Roman National History Society. 

Utilizing the crypts and cemeteries they charitably maintained, particularly those for burying the indigent, the orders positioned skeletons and rotting cadavers as carefully as any stage directors. Often these scenes were for Catholic feast days linked with mortality, such as All Soul's Day. Through these photographs you can also see the contemporary appearance of the Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte crypt when it was used by the Confraternity of Prayer and Death to bury migrant workers, particularly those who perished of malaria working the fields outside Rome. Harper explains the strange scenes:

When it came to sacred representations, they were the Broadway of their time. The confraternity employed set designers, costume designers, machinists, etchers, and wax sculptors to make extremely realistic and explicit scenes of death, purgatory and the final judgment with the bodies they collected. Popes and kings attended and the public lined up down the street. The first photo [pictured above] shows their scene depicting the Martyrdom of Diodorus and Mariano in 1865. The second image [below] is an etching of the last representation they mounted before their grounds were destroyed- The Vision of Ezekiel in 1868.

These images are from the end of the corpse theatre era, which was effectively stopped by Rome's joining Italy in unification in 1870, the new burial laws limiting the casual casting of corpses in the productions. 

You can see more recent photographs of Santa Maria dell’ Orazione e delle Morte at All the Saints You Should Know. 

Morbid Mondays highlight macabre stories from around the world and through time, indulging in our morbid curiosity for stories from history's darkest corners. Read more Morbid Mondays>

The Adventurers' Club in Los Angeles (all photographs by Kendal Carson)

In a nondescript, windowless building advertised by no sign, on the border of Chinatown in Los Angeles, a society of explorers convenes. The Adventurers' Club, founded in 1921, has a 200-person membership limited to men who "have had an unusual adventure on land, at seas, or in the air hunting, trapping, exploring, flying, or those who have attained a distinctive reputation in the field of arts, music or science."

Last month on Narratively, author Zach Urbina and photographer Kendal Carson shared their visit to this curious club in a piece called "Twilight of the Adventurers." Despite aging membership, the taxidermy-laden walls of the Adventurers' Club are still filled each week with tales of sailing the world in the merchant marines, trekking solo to the Great Pyramids as a teenager, flying the globe in a custom aircraft, and looking for meteorites on the South Pole. Alongside the eclectic furniture in the drab interior are gazelle heads, spears, airplane propellers, maps, and even a mammoth skeleton. However, the vibrancy of this place may be waning. As Urbina writes:

Without an infusion of lifeblood of new members, The Adventurers’ Club is very likely to fade entirely. How many Gen Y/Millennials can tell you what an SR-71 is, or understand the archetypal machismo of a man like Teddy Roosevelt? As the globe grows ever more tightly connected, the skills of individual resiliency, camaraderie and courage that each member clearly holds dear have faded from prominence.

Below are more photographs by Kendal Carson of the Adventurers' Club and its members shared with Atlas Obscura, and you can read more about the extraordinary group at Narratively. 

Read more about LA's Adventurers' Club in "Twilight of the Adventurers' Club" by Zach Urbina with photographs by Kendal Carson on Narratively. 

Variable harlequin frog, believed to be extinct in the 1990s, rediscovered in 2003 (photograph by Brian.gratwicke)

Amphibians — including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians — have survived five mass extinctions on earth, and have endured in their current form more than 200 million years. Many scientists believe that we are entering or are currently in the sixth mass extinction, and this time amphibians may not be so lucky. Today, between the devastating effects of a disease called chytrid fungus and the broad ramifications of climate change and habitat destruction, nearly one third of the world's 7,000 species of amphibians are threatened or extinct.

The rare axolotl salamander is on the verge of extinction (photograph by Vassil)

But in the early 2000s, a series of discoveries in Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Australia made it clear that some of those extinct species were in fact still out there. Robin Moore, Director of the Amphibian Program at Conservation International and founder of the Amphibian Survival Alliance, has dedicated his life to the study and conservation of frogs and salamanders, and needless to say he was quite heartened by these findings. So in 2010, he began a campaign to raise awareness as well as funds, with the goal of heading out into the wilds to see if other "extinct" species were still around. He worked with experts around the world to compile the most likely candidates for "un-extinction," ultimately putting together a "most wanted" list of the top 10 iconic lost species. 

Hula Painted Frog, rediscovered in Israel in 2011, after 55 years of "extinction" (photograph by Mickey Samuni-Blank)

That in turn grew into supporting 33 research teams of more than 120 scientists on journeys to 21 countries to look for Lazarus frogs. It became the largest coordinated global search for lost species. Moore himself went on expeditions in the uncharted territory of the Chocó jungle in Colombia and the cloud forests of southwest Haiti, as well as India, Israel, and Costa Rica. He chronicles these journeys, their disappointments, and their triumphs in his new book, In Search of Lost Frogs.

Although many of the frogs the researchers were seeking remain extinct, more than a dozen were found, including the Mozart's Frog, the Ventriloqual Frog, and the Bornean Rainbow Toad, which hadn't been seen in 87 years. What's more, several new species were discovered — including a beaked toad now called the Monty Burns, after the villainous boss on The Simpsons, which was named Time magazine's #1 new species of 2010.

Cliff Chirping Frog, a relative of the newly un-extinct Mozart's Frog (photograph by Dawson)

In addition to the thrill of being able to bring these amphibians back from extinction, studying them may lead scientists to find new ways to save others. If researchers can discover why these frogs were able to survive, they may be able to help other species replicate those methods. One such finding has been a bacteria discovered on the skin of some frogs that enables them to fight off the deadly chytrid fungus. If a way can be found to put that bacteria on the skin of other frogs, as Moore wrote on BBC Earth, "we may be able to give Lazarus frogs a second chance."

Bonus: For a slideshow of Moore's award-winning amphibian photography, go here.

Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada (photograph by Juliane Schultz/Flickr)

Around the world are lakes iridescent with rippling turquoise waters, appearing like visions out of a dream. However, the cause for these startlingly blue lakes is something that's been occurring in a seasonal rotation for millions of years.

From Lake Louise in Canada's Banff National Park to Lake Tekapo in New Zealand, what all these incredibly blue bodies of water share is a proximity to glaciers. Each summer, meltwater flowing down from the glaciers to the lakes brings with it rock flour. This fine, ghostly grey material is made from the grinding of the glacier against bedrock, a process not dissimilar, although on a much more massive scale, from sandpaper.

When this rock flour gets into the water, it doesn't sink. Instead the glacial silt hovers as a sort of underwater cloud. While you'd think that might turn the lake grey or white, what happens is much more interesting. As the water takes in the long waves of light, the rock flour absorbs the shortest. What's left reflecting back at your vision is for the most part green and blue. 

This surreal vibrancy can occur wherever a glacier meets a lake; some due to their geology and geography have more extraordinary colors, such as Peyto Lake in Canada. Below are some of the world's bluest lakes, although visit in cold months without the enhancing rock flour, and you may have a beautiful view, but nothing hallucinatory. 

Lake Tekapo, with glacial meltwater & rock flour (photograph by Neerav Bhatt/Flickr)

Lake Tekapo, New Zealand (photograph by profernity/Flickr)

Lake Pukaki, New Zealand (photograph by brookpeterson/Flickr)

Milky water in Lake Louise, Canada, caused by rock flour (photograph by orlandk/Flickr)

Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada (photograph by Cleavers/Flickr)

Peyto Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada (photograph by Tobias Alt/Wikimedia)

Discover more watery wonders on Atlas Obscura >

Venice gondola (1880-90), photographed by Paolo Salviati (via SMU Central University Library)

The Venetian gondola evokes thoughts of sipping a sparkling tipple on a romantic excursion, helmed by a straw-hatted gondolier softly crooning into the night. Long before gondolas became the tourist draw that we know today, the flat-bottomed boat had more to do with critical transportation through shallow muddy canals than with a leisurely pleasure cruise. In the 16th century, the gondola was lavishly detailed and symbolic of the grand city of Venice. At one time, 10,000 gondolas took to the waters of the canals, mostly functioning as transportation for the rich. Wealthy denizens could purchase their own rigs for private use, and flaunt them as if they were the sports cars of the 1500s.  

The familiar open gondola fully exposes the passengers, which was problematic for amorous encounters back in its heyday. The most expensive augmentation on the gondola was the felze, a small covered cabin that offered protection, privacy, and a cushy compartment for a good romp. As a popular fixture of intimacy, the felze was a floating thalamus used as a nuptial chamber, granting discretion for newlyweds. The felze also became an inadvertent sanctuary for escaped criminals. These floating love lairs were monumental in perpetuating Venice’s reputation as a libertine city. Eventually the baticopo, or cloth panel that obscured the passengers, was required to be raised at all times so that prostitutes could not sully the pleasure craft with their carnal embraces.

Giacomo Casanova, world renowned Venetian lover and all around bad boy, penned in his memoir, Story of My Life, countless examples of his gondola usage for licentious romances and hasty getaways of the 18th century. He dabbled in gambling, public disputes, and Freemasonry, but mostly he loved the ladies. Obscured by the felze’s shuttered windows, or Venetian blinds, Casanova used the gondola as his own bachelor pad, taking liberties with young lovers under a cloak of darkness.

One of Casanova’s favorite late-night pastimes was to unmoor the gondolas in hopes of enraging the blaspheming gondoliers the next morning. Gondoliers were not always the placid crooners we know today. They were notorious for gambling, fighting, cursing, and extortion.

1597 depiction of a gondola (via Internet Archive Book Images)

1578 illustration of a gondola in Venice (via Bibliothèque nationale de France)

By the 16th century, the gondola reached the most sumptuous stages of its evolution, boasting exquisite workmanship, materials, and opulent fittings such as brass sea horses, mythical gods, and heads of griffins. The felze contained mirrors, carpets, hand warmers, and upholstery of rich silks, velvets, and brocades. The boats became so overloaded with ornamentation that a sumptuary law of the 16th century forbade all gondolas from bearing extravagant customizations, including fine fabrics, hangings, carvings, and inlay.

Gondola construction adhered to rigorous standards, using exactly 280 components and eight types of wood (cherry, elm, fir, larch, lime, mahogany, oak, and walnut). A specific asymmetrical length balanced the gondolier, who rowed with an oar rather than punting along the water’s bottom. All gondolas were mandatorily solid black, their felze draped in black wool, and all steel adornments were standardized and plain. To enforce a law that banned nobles from flaunting their wealth was indeed one of the government’s great hurdles.

A fleet of all-black, spear-shaped vessels navigating the Grand Canal surely cast a sinister impression. Some believe the black color symbolized mourning of the Venetian Republic, or deaths caused by the Black Plague. More likely the sumptuary law functioned as a mandate against all color, thus the dark vessels retained an ominous air.

Ralph Curtis, "The Bridge of Sighs, Venice," oil on canvas (via Wikimedia)

In the 19th century, Lord Byron preferred to swim while in Venice, or rather skinny-dip with his courtesans despite the polluted waters of the Grand Canal. Byron was more likely to use a gondola as an escape vessel or even as a “dog house” in which to catch a peaceful night’s sleep after disputing with his wife. In his poem "Beppo," Byron identifies the foreboding gondola for its ability to hide the truth:

‘Tis a long cover’d boat that’s common here,
Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly;
Row’d by two rowers, each call’d ‘Gondolier,’
It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,
Where none can make out what you say or do.

Lyric poet Percy Bysshe Shelley described the gondola as “funeral bark” in which he and Byron glided through Venice. He likened the gondolas to “moths of which a coffin might have been the chrysalis.”

Today, approximately 400 gondolas remain in service. However, the modern day gondola experience serves less as a lovers’ clandestine hideaway and more as a languid sail across tourist-flocked waters. And further afield the tradition has spread, including Gondola Servizio at Lake Merritt, Oakland, offering the optional felze-covered gondola ride for contemporary access to the intriguing historic custom, complete with authentically and rigorously trained gondoliers who just may serenade you, oh-so-creepily out of tune.

Gondolas in Venice in 2010 (photograph by llee_wu/Flickr)

"Ada Lovelace portrait" (by Alfred Edward Chalon - Science & Society Picture Library, via Wikimedia Commons)

I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand.

—Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace (1818–1852), widely considered to be the first computer programmer, got her own holiday in 2009. Founded by journalist and digital rights Suw Charman-Anderson, Ada Lovelace Day honors unsung women heroes of science past, and promotes the work of women in the STEM fields today.

The only legitimate daughter of poet and notorious adulterer Lord Byron, Ada was given intensive mathematic instruction from an early age, because her mother Anne Isabella believed that this would stave off the insanity she feared Ada had inherited from her father. Anne and Lord Byron separated when Ada was only one month old; he died without ever seeing his daughter again. Though Ada was often sick as a child, she was deeply engaged with her studies, working diligently on projects. Her first prolonged scientific inquiry was at age 12 when she decided to understand the mechanics of flying, intensively studying bird anatomy and different materials that could be used to construct wings. She wrote a book of her findings with illustrated plates called Flyology.

By age 17, Ada had begun to show "remarkable mathematic abilities," and she was also fascinated by metaphysics, phrenology, and mesmerism. She wanted to create "a calculus of the nervous system": a mathematically based model for the way the brain and nerves give rise to thoughts and feelings. The following year she met mathematics professor, inventor, and mechanical engineer Charles Babbage, who was working on a prototype of a mechanical calculator called a Difference Engine. The engine was never completed due primarily to funding disputes, but it is considered to be one of the first programmable computers. Though Babbage was more than twice her age, he and Ada began an intense intellectual partnership that would last the rest of her life. Babbage adored Ada, calling her the "Enchantress of Numbers."

When Babbage was working on his next prototype, the Analytical Engine, the mathematician Luigi Menabrea wrote a French paper on its uses, which Ada spent nine months translating, adding an extensive set of notes that became nearly three times as long as the paper itself. These notes explained the wider applications of the engine and also included a specific algorithm that she believed would teach the engine how to do calculations of Bernoulli numbers. Babbage wrote that Ada's notes “entered fully into almost all the very difficult and abstract questions connected with the subject,” and the paper is now considered to be the very first description of algorithms and computer programming.

Ada was married in 1835 and had three children; she died in 1852 of uterine cancer — likely exacerbated by bloodletting, which was standard at the time.

Coinciding with Ada Lovelace Day 2014, Melville House Press has released a new biography: Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger. In previous years the holiday has been celebrated with  an Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon at Brown University, where volunteers added and improved Wikipedia entries about female scientists, and an Ada Lovelace Conference. The computer language created on behalf of the US Department of Defense is named Ada, and in 2012 the Mayor of London named a massive tunnel boring machine in her honor. She even got a Google Doodle in 2012, on the 197th anniversary of her birth.

Bonus: Want to read all about Ada in comic form? Check out this one from Kate Beaton or this one from Sydney Padua.

Ever since most of us stopped being nomads and settling in cities and towns, civilizations have set aside green spaces dedicated to plants, flowers, and the general enjoyment of nature. From the simple to the complex, gardens seem to embody the aesthetic tastes of the cultures that crafted them.

In this rundown of botanical gardens around the world, we take a look at the oldest of these botanical gardens, and explore a bit of their unique histories.

ORTO BOTANICO DI PADOVA
Padova, Italy

16th-century illustration of the Orto Botanico di Padova (via Esculapio/Wikimedia)

Established in 1545 by the Senate of the Venetian Republic, the Orto Botanico di Padova can be proud of being the world's oldest academic botanical garden that is still in its original location. With over 6,000 types of plants, the garden is committed to nurturing medicinal flora that produce natural remedies. Lookalike and poisonous plants are also grown here, so that students can distinguish the useful plants from the harmful and false ones. The central fountain is fed by a hot spring that runs underneath the garden, which keeps the aquatic plants healthy and happy.

For its valuable plants, thieves would often scale the circular walls around the garden, risking fines, exile, and jail time if they were caught.

Botanical garden of Padua (photograph by Rollroboter/Wikimedia)

Botanical garden of Padua (photograph by Rollroboter/Wikimedia)

16th-century map of the Botanical garden of Padua, by Girolamo Porro (via uni-mainz.de)

GARDENS OF VERSAILLES
Versailles, France

Latona Fountain with the Grand Canal in the background (photograph by Kal-El/Wikimedia)

In 1661, Louis XIV chose André Le Nôtre to begin the 40-year task of constructing the grand gardens of Versailles. Located behind the famous Versailles Château, the 800 hectares of classic French Garden-style are now visited by over six million people a year.

A Grand Canal bisects the gardens for nearly a mile, and the massive waterway also served as a convenient place for boating parties. Extensive numbers of fountains flow throughout the gardens, and many follow the theme of Apollo and solar imagery as metaphors for Louis XIV, the Sun King. A key element is the Grotte des Bains d'Apollon, which is a massive sea cave decorated with shell-work. Statutes of the sun king attended by nereids are surrounded by elaborate fountains.

Map of Versailles from 1905 (via Internet Archive Book Images)

Bassin d'Apollon, one of the fountains in the gardens of Versailles (photograph by Allison Meier/Atlas Obscura) 

Panoramic view of the Versailles Gardens (photograph by uggboy /Wikimedia) 

THE LOST GARDENS OF HELIGAN
Mevagissey, England

The Italian area in the Lost Gardens (photograph by Chris Wood/Wikimedia)

Known in Cornish as the Lowarth Helygen, the Lost Gardens of Heligan near the fishing village of Mevagissey were planted by the Tremayne family in the middle of the 18th century. Fallen into disrepair after the First World War, the estate later restored its botanical holdings to their full glory in the 1990s.

Visitors to the Lost Gardens can admire Europe's only pineapple pit — an ingenious way discovered by Victorian-era gardeners to coax pineapples from colder environs. The pit consists of shallow trenches covered with glass and connected with outer troughs filled with up to 15 tons of fresh horse manure. This rich decomposition radiates heat through the pit walls, and the pineapples are kept toasty in the heart of the troughs.

While most of the gardens are potagers or ornamental, the Lost Gardens also have vast slopes of valleys that contain much wilder plants, as well as more contemporary sculptures of lounging giants. These areas are named the Jungle and the Lost Valley, and much of the garden drains through it.

The pineapple pit at the Lost Gardens (photograph by Deb Collins/Flickr)

The Lost Gardens of Heligan (photograph by Robert Pittman/Flickr)

Sleeping Goddess of the Lost Gardens (photograph by Loco Steve/Flickr)

THE DURBAN BOTANIC GARDENS
Durban, South Africa

Durban Botanic Gardens (photograph by Alf Igel/Flickr)

The oldest thriving botanical gardens on the African continent are in Durban, South Africa, in KwaZulu-Natal province ("the garden province"). Intended to supply the Kew gardens in England with economically valuable and novel plants, the Durban Botanical Gardens were set up in December of 1849. Cash crops like sugar cane, coffee, pineapples, and tea were quickly established. 

One of the unique structures at the Durban gardens is the Living Beehive, a dome structure with walls incorporating dense mats of creeping vines. This allows enough air to circulate into the rich forest and wetland growths of the interior. Check out the Living Hive pictures here (courtesy of the garden designers).

The Durban gardens now host local music bands, indigenous plant fairs on an international level, and Victorian tea parties. 

Durban Botanic Gardens (photograph by Wayne77/Wikimedia)

Durban Botanic Gardens (photograph by YattaCat/Flickr)

SIGIRIYA GARDENS
Dambulla, Sri Lanka

The Lion Gate that leads to the gardens (Image by Cherubino via Wikimedia)

As the site of an ancient palace from the Fifth century BC, Sigiriya in Sri Lanka is one of the oldest instances of urban planning. The Lion Rock that dominates the landscape here overlooks the ruins of the royal quarters that also served as a Buddhist monastery until the end of the 14th century.

Extensive terraces of gardens are cut into the rock, and there are many cisterns in the cliffs that once held water for the rich plant life. The water gardens feature an ancient style called Charbagh, which is a quadrilateral garden divided by flowing water or paths into four smaller parts. 

Lion Gate at Sigiriya (photograph by Paul Mannix/Flickr)

Stairway on Lion's rock (photograph by Malcolm Browne/Flickr)

A view of Sigiriya Rock as seen from the Fountain Gardens (photograph by Marco Lazzaroni/Flickr)

Bird's eye view of the Sigiriya gardens (photograph by Ela112/Wikimedia)

THE CANGLANG PAVILION
Suzhou, China

Moon Gate at Canglang Pavilion (photograph by 猫猫的日记本/Wikimedia)

Song Dynasty poet Su Shunqing set up the Canglang Pavilion in 1044 BC on the grounds of what used to be an imperial flower garden. The name of the gardens derives from an ancient poet, and was used by Su to express his displeasure at being removed from political office: "If the Canglang River is dirty I wash my muddy feet; If the Canglang River is clean, I wash my ribbon".

Many garden buildings on this UNESCO World Heritage site are similarly inspired by poetry and literature. For example, the Fish Watching Place is a pavilion overlooking the water, and is named after a famous dialectic by Zhuang Zi about fish. Other structures include the Temple of 500 Sages, the Water Pavilion of Lotus Blossoms, and the Realm of Yaohua.

Canglang Pavilion (photograph by Chinatravelsavvy/Wikimedia)

Canglang Pavilion (photograph by Chinatravelsavvy/Wikimedia)

FLOATING GARDENS OF LAKE XOCHIMILCO
Xochimilco, Mexico 

A colorful trajinera boat traversing the floating gardens (Image by Protoplasma Kid via Wikimedia)

Chinampas date back to 1150 BC as a Mesoamerican method of using small floating gardens on shallow lake beds or made-made canal systems. The Aztec Empire flourished using this floating agriculture until the Spanish arrived in the New World. Only about 5,000 chinampas exist now.

In Xochimilco, Mexico, the chinampas are still in use by farmers, though the canals have been much reduced from their previous sprawl over most of the Valley of Mexico. The water levels continue to drop each year due to population demands in Mexico City. Today, visitors can ride on colorful gondalas called trajineras on tours of the gardens.

The most famous floating garden in Xochimilco belonged to a local resident named Julián Santana Barrera. A loner by nature, he was known for collecting creepy dolls as they floated by and hanging them from branches to appease the spirit of a dead girl he discovered on the island. He often commented to curious visitors that he believed the dolls would awaken at dusk to kill animals. The mass collection of dolls were discovered in the early 1990s when the area had to be cleansed of a surge in water lily growth. Julián passed away in 2001, but his dolls continue to keep away evil spirits.

Island of the Dolls in Xochimilco (photograph by Amrith Raj/Wikimedia)

Island of the Dolls (photograph by Esparta Palma/Wikimedia)

Discover more of the world's incredible gardens on Atlas Obscura >

Much has been written about the history of subway maps in New York City, from their aesthetic to their accuracy, their designers to their legions of riders. The same is true for the London tube, the Moscow subway, the Berlin U-Bahn, and on and on. Tracking the complicated dance of millions of people across the daily lives of major cities requires a comprehensive understanding of urban planning, mass psychology, and practical design. 

Imaginary Fire Island rail map (created by Transit Authority Figures)

Or does it? Whether out of frustration, wishful thinking, or just a firm conviction that it can be done, a great many laypeople have tried their hand at designing transit maps. Some of these stem from city familiarity and aspirational infrastructural reform — former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn used an imaginary rail line map on some of his reelection campaign flyers, a grad student's fantasy Pittsburgh transit map went viral last year, and City Data's urban planning forum has a page for fantasy transit maps with hundreds of entries. Others are much more speculative and unlikely, such as the Fire Island map above (which is for sale as a poster here) or webcomic XKCD's map of every subway line in North America linked together.

Here, for your armchair urban planning needs, are six more beautiful fantasy transit maps, from the practical to the fantastical. 

Austin, Texas

Imaginary Austin transit map (created by Ivan Specht)

The brainchild of eighth-grader Ivan Specht, Metro-Ology started as a Father's Day present for his dad, who lives in Austin. Ivan designed the system he thought the city should have, showing a shrewd familiarity with the city's layout and people's movements. As he told Urban Omnibus, he wanted to “concentrate the number of stops and lines in the downtown areas, and to try to get an even balance throughout the city." Since that first success, he's made transit maps for cities all over the world, from Nuuk, Greenland, to Johannesburg, South Africa, all of which are for sale as posters and t-shirts on Metro-Ology. For $65, he'll make a custom map for any city of your choice. 

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Imaginary Albuquerque transit map (created by Ben Byrne) 

Taking inspiration from creative design agency Transit Authority Figures, which sells faux subway maps for Cape Cod, Fire Island, Northampton, and many more, graphic designer Ben Byrne made a fantasy subway map for his home city of Albuquerque. He designed it on a lark, but got such a strong response after posting it on his blog that he decided to Kickstart turning his "unique concept and piece of digital design into a genuine physical artifact." The campaign was successful, and he's now got a waiting list to buy his posters.

Greater Greater Washington Area

Imaginary greater Greater Baltimore & Washington Metro Map (created by David Alpert)

David Alpert, founder of the urban planning and transportation-focused site Greater Greater Washington, designed this fantasy transit map that is firmly grounded in reality. It takes as its starting point the extant Washington, DC metro system and extends it in all directions, adding new stops, actualizing proposed municipal initiatives, extending existing lines, and adding plenty of new ones. This is actually the second version of the fantasy map; after publishing the first, he took suggestions from his very engaged readership and made significant changes to reflect community feedback.

Baltimore, Maryland

Subway restaurants as subway stations (created by Chris Nelson)

Also in the Washington, DC area, a Baltimore blogger made a subway map for his town that's a bit less about urban planning and a bit more given to chance. Baltimore has only one subway line, but more than 140 Subway franchises, which naturally led Nelson, whose blog burgersub tracks homicides and plots them on Google maps, to his Subway / subway idea. As he told City Lore last year, "I like to imagine what my city would be like if I were running all the planning decisions."

The Entire United States

All the US highways as subway lines (created by Cameron Booth)

Australian graphic designer Cameron Booth runs a whole Transit Maps Tumblr, where he rates and reviews all kinds of maps, "whether they be real or imaginary, or from the past, future or present." He curates images of official transit maps, improved transit maps, and dreamt-up maps of all sorts, as well as delights like a tiny 1980s LA tourist pamphlet map, a hyperlapse of a Seattle subway station, and a DC Metro map made of M&Ms. Naturally he also designs his own maps, and they're extremely ambitious; the most complex is the map of the entire United States with its highways re-rendered as subway lines — the project took him over a year to complete.

Westeros 

Westeros transit map (created by Michael Tyznik)

Inspired by Cameron Booth, graphic designer Michael Tyznik took the "fantasy" aspect of fantasy transit maps a big step further, mapping an imaginary system for an imaginary country: Westeros from Game of Thrones. Tynzik is no stranger to transit map design — he's done light-rail maps of Columbus, Cincinnati, and more — and he brings that experience to bear for Westeros. It's an incredibly comprehensive map, including ferry and gondola lines for those routes that require crossing bodies of water, as well as indicating which lines are closed or discontinued, coinciding with aspects of the saga's plot.

The Marine Mammals Collection at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland (all photographs by Dylan Thuras/Atlas Obscura)

As the world's largest research collection dedicated to the planet's most massive mammals, the Smithsonian's Marine Mammal Collection has two cavernous warehouses to contain everything from a blue whale skull to a drawer full of narwhal tusks. Part of the Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland, the collection dates to the 1850s, and includes thousands of specimens related to marine life, its greatest emphasis on the cetaceans — the intelligent, mysterious, and disappearing whales, porpoises, and dolphins.

Recently, Atlas Obscura visited the incredible space, led by Marine Mammals Collection Manager Charley Potter. In addition to overseeing the osteological and wet specimens, along with other essential archive material, Potter regularly journeys around the East Coast to contextualize this historic knowledge with the state of cetaceans today. When the animals wash up on the shore, he is often there to examine or bring them back to the Museum Support Center. As he explained as we stood in the dolphin necropsy lab where these animals are dissected, knowing what killed an animal, what injuries it survived, and keeping track of the sudden frequency of beached cetaceans is essential to conservation. This encompasses historic analysis as well, such as skin samples from 1940s Alaskan bottlenose dolphins that are being studied to compare current viruses to past epidemics. 

Charley Potter in the dolphin necropsy lab with a bottlenose dolphin skull

Potter explained that when a whale's habitat is lost, they tend to go away forever. "We have a good chance of losing these whales, these unique forms, before we even realize they're there," he said. This goal of conservation has long been a major focus of the collection — back in 1871 its founder Spencer Fullerton Baird helped establish the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries, a major step towards not treating the ocean as an endless resource. Yet overall these specimens help to better understand animals that are still, in large part, enigmas. Potter opened a drawer full of narwhal tusks as an example. Once thought to be like antlers, they're now considered sensitive and sensory, able to detect things like alterations in water salinity. Currently the Smithsonian is participating in making a complete genome of the narwhal to unravel some of the secrets of its spiral tusk. 

Drawer of narwhal tusks

Detail of the narwhal tusks

Just below the narwhal tusks was another drawer, this one lined with specimens of baleen. Used for filter-feeding by whales, ships once scoured the ocean for the toothy substance, selling the material for use in everything from umbrellas to corsets. Before the availability of plastic or fiberglass, baleen sometimes commanded a higher price than whale oil. Since it grows like hair and nails, researchers are now able to use baleen as a sort of time capsule, showing through isotope analysis what the whales were eating, the tropic levels, and other ecological points on a timeline stretching over two centuries. "We really are getting an idea of what the environment was like," Potter said.

While fishing is still a major concern for many species, there are also troubling phenomena like the beaked whales that seem to be getting zapped during tests of anti-sub warfare, washing ashore when exposed to sonar exercises reflecting sound on the deep sea scattering layer. Combining studies of the shapes of the dense bones in their skulls in the collection to look at their acoustic profile may eventually help save these whales.

Whale skulls

Whale skulls & spines

Dolphin skulls

Walking through this specimen storage is an incredible experience in biodiversity and the plights of conservation, from the multitudes of small dolphin skulls captured in fisheries, to the peaking jaws of the whales lined up like a mountain range, to the colossal spines arranged on shelves going up to the ceiling. The most impressive object in the collection for its size and scarcity is the blue whale skull, dwarfing the other specimens along one wall. Back in 1904, representatives from the Smithsonian including Chief Osteologist and Head of Exhibits Frederic A. Lucas traveled to Hermitage Bay in Newfoundland, to accomplish what no natural history team had done before — take a cast of a blue whale. They got one, stretching 78 feet, through a whaling company, and with gargantuan amounts of burlap and plaster of Paris molded each part of the whale's body. The completed cast went on display at the St. Louis Exposition and the skeleton itself went to the Smithsonian. 

The blue whale skull

Just beneath the skull is one of the most recent acquisitions, stretched out on the floor from its formidable bow jaw to tapering tail bones. These are the remains of Tips the North Atlantic right whale, brought in at the end of last year. Like Phoenix, a still-living right whale who is represented as a model in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, Tips was tracked by marine biologists for much of his life before dying of entanglement in 2010. It's an unfortunately common cause of death for the right whales, where their jaw or fins can get fatally pinned by ropes and other fishing equipment. (Phoenix actually got her name after escaping what seemed like a deadly entanglement in 1997, which left a scar on her mouth that's included in the museum model.) The distinctive white scarring on his tail flukes that gave Tips his name, and helped his remains be identified, connecting three decades of life history to the bones. With under 500 right whales known to be in existence, such data can help this most-endangered of whales from extinction. 

The bones of Tips the right whale

Osteoporosis in one of Tips' bones that suggests survival of a previous injury

Even with all of the hopeful research the collection allows, there is still something melancholy about many of the specimens, most of which were sourced from fisheries, entanglements, and strandings. Yet through the collection, the life stories embedded on the bones can offer data invaluable to the survival of these species. Recent projects include 3D scanning of collection data and continued collaboration among scientists to make this taxonomic collection a resource for genomics, morphology, and conservation. And then there is the less definable and staggering experience of walking beneath a blue whale skull, connecting these rarely-seen magnificent creatures to our greater biodiversity. 

It is extremely rare one gets to experience true, utter darkness — a darkness that has no shadows, no movement, and no light. It's even more rare to experience complete silence. We are not just talking about a normal silence, with the wind blowing past and a few crickets chirping. This silence is so silent that you can hear your own breath, heartbeat, and inner monologue. I had the privilege (perhaps misfortune?) of experiencing both of my senses being deprived while staying overnight at the Grand Canyon Caverns Underground Suite, known as the deepest, darkest, oldest, and loneliest hotel room on planet Earth.

Inside the underground hotel (all photographs by Matt Blitz/Atlas Obscura)

Lying 230 feet below ground level at Arizona milepost 115 on Route 66 are the Grand Canyon Caverns. They are the largest dry caverns in America, and one of the biggest known deposits of selenite crystals, making it truly a natural wonder. Unlike wet caverns, there are absolutely no living things here. The air is so dry and arid that without water, no animal or man would be able to survive past 72 hours. 

It is estimated the caves were first formed over 335 million years ago, when most of the southwest United States was underwater. About 35 million years ago, rain poured into the subterranean spaces, and when it evaporated, the caverns took shape. Despite it their lifespan being millions of years, the underground site was not discovered until about 90 years ago. 

It was 1927 when an enterprising Walter Peck, on his way to the weekly poker game, nearly fell into a hole in the ground. Not wanting to miss poker, he vowed to come back the next day to investigate. He did, and brought a few friends, a bucket, and rope. He had his friends lower him down, and then began exploring. Hours later, when he came back to the surface, he was grinning ear-to-ear. Peck thought he had found the only cavern in the world to be rich in gold, diamond, and silver. So, he bought up the whole property, and began plans for a mining operation. He was, of course, wrong.

What he thought were precious metals were just iron oxide and rust glimmering on the limestone rock. Not to be deterred, Peck found another way to make money from his discovery — curiosity seekers. He charged visitors a quarter to be lowered via bucket into the caverns. As one of the first Route 66 tourist stops, the caverns were a hit and remain to this day a vital stop on the "mother road."

Peck wasn't the only one to realize how special these caverns were — so did the US government. At the height of the Cold War, in 1962, the US government recognized the caverns as a perfect place for a fallout shelter. They sent over enough water, food (well, oddly, just crackers and hard candy), and "sanitation equipment" for 2,000 people to survive in the caverns for 14 days. These 62-year-old rations are still in the caves today, preserved by the dry climate and ready to eat. In fact, I was able to try one of the infamous "survival crackers" and a green hard candy. The cracker was stale.

Legend has it that this was also the planned spot for JFK to hideout in during a nuclear apocalypse. After all, what's safer than a giant series of caves deep underground? 

Survival crackers 

Under this premise, about four years ago, the Grand Canyon Caverns management put in what is, at least in my opinion, the spookiest hotel room in the world. Equipped with modern amenities like a shower, a television, and an iPod dock, it is like any other other hotel room — except in a cave 220 feet below ground. This was where I stayed by myself for one frightened, lonely night. No other human was within nearly a football field from me. No other light was available beside a few lamps. No other noise was heard other than whatever noises I made. It was scary and exhilarating. In a day and age where we are never truly alone and never in complete silence, this was a breath of arid, cave air.

In the interest of honesty, I'll admit it — before I went to bed, I turned out all the lights, leaving myself in absolute pitch black darkness. Within 60 seconds, I turned on one lamp. Yeah,  I'm not ready for complete darkness. 

All photographs by Jason deCaires Taylor unless noted

Jason deCaires Taylor creates massive underwater sculptures that are not only visually stunning, but are designed to improve the environmental diversity of their surroundings. His latest work, Ocean Atlas, sponsored by the Bahamas Reef Environment Education Foundation, was installed off the coast of Nassau this first week of this month. Weighing in at more than 60 tons, the Bahamian girl holding up the sea is the largest underwater sculpture in the world. 

An award-winning sculptor, photographer, diving instructor, and underwater naturalist, Taylor has been making pioneering underwater sculptures as public art projects for nearly a decade. His statues are made from sustainable materials and a special concrete mix that encourages coral growth, creating artificial reefs for marine life to colonize, as well as drawing tourists away from other natural reef areas that are in danger. 

In 2006, Taylor founded Molinere Bay Sculpture Park, the world's first underwater sculpture garden, off the coast of Grenada. His first work there was Grace Reef, which features 16 statues made from casts of local Grenadian women, and the park now includes 65 individual statues, each based on a living person, from a circle of life-size children to a man seated at a desk covered with newspaper clippings. 

Taylor also has sculptures in England, Wales, and Greece, as well as a second underwater garden, Museo Subacuático de Arte de Cancun, which features more than 400 statues in three "salons." His statues are living works of art, shifting and changing as they are colonized by marine life; Man on Fire, for example, is filled with cuttings of fire coral, which, as they grow, will make the statue appear to actually be on fire. 

Taylor told Environmental Graffiti, "I am trying to portray how human intervention or interaction with nature can be positive and sustainable, an icon of how we can live in a symbiotic relationship with nature." Ocean Atlas is the start of yet another underwater park: the Sir Nicholas Nuttall Coral Reef Sculpture Garden. The Creators Project has more images from the installation, and will soon premier a short documentary about the project.

An underwater sculpture by Jason deCaires Taylor (photograph by julie roholoff/Flickr) 

An underwater sculpture covered in coral (photograph by Michael Brashier/Flickr)

Discover more strange statues on Atlas Obscura >

Although it sometimes seems today's New York City is made up of nothing but brand new, ultra-luxury, high-end condominiums, it is still scattered with an incredible number of derelict buildings, abandoned historical sites, and disused infrastructure spaces. The most high-profile recent ruin repurposing is the High Line — 1.45 miles of disused railway tracks made over into a linear park, the final piece of which opened just last month. The project was massively successful, especially in terms of rising real estate prices nearby and a huge influx of tourism in the neighborhood. It also inspired imitators: a West Harlem resident recently came forward with a proposal for a similar project, which would involve selling the air rights above a rail line to pay for the park, and then using them to create an affordable housing district.

Here are five more NYC ruins, from the Bronx to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that may soon be given new lives:

QueensWay

Queensway (photo by Jim.henderson, via Wikimedia)

Also inspired by the High Line is the plan to convert the QueensWay. The 3.5 miles of rail tracks between Rego Park and Ozone Park — known as the Rockaway Beach Branch that once served the LIRR's Rockaway Beach line — seem to be moving ahead into an elevated park. “The QueensWay is like the High Line on steroids: It’s more than twice as long and seven times the acreage,” Adrian Benepe of the Trust for Public Land told CBS New York.

The proposed project will cost in the neighborhood of $120 million, and is not without its detractors — opponents would rather see the rail line itself restored, which would increase transportation options to an underserved section of Queens. But the current proposal includes walkways, biking trails, a wetland habitat and bioswale, and outdoor classrooms. It's possible construction could begin early next year.

The Lowline

Exhibition with a prototype for the Lowline (photograph by Bit Boy/Flickry)

Although projections put the opening of the Lowline at around 2018, the idea has already been tantalizing New Yorkers for several years. The proposal to reappropriate the 1.5 acre Williamsburg trolley terminal to create the world's first underground park was made public in 2011, and has received tremendous media coverage and both official and popular support, including a record-breaking Kickstarter that raised more than $155k from 3,300 donors.

The trolley terminal, which was built in 1903 and abandoned since 1948, runs for three blocks under Delancey Street on the Lower East Side. The park will be lit and powered by a combination of LEDs and a new kind of fiber-optic technology called a "remote skylight," which, in addition to pulling enough sun from street level to light the park, is also strong enough for photosynthesis, enabling plants to grown beneath the ground.

As the Lowline website states, "We envision not merely a new public space, but an innovative display of how technology can transform our cities in the 21st century." An engineering firm has priced the project at a mere $55 million.

Admiral's Row

Admiral's Row (photograph by Bitch Cakes/Flickr)

Another site treasured by urban explorers and lovers of derelict buildings is the Brooklyn Navy Yard's Admiral's Row, 10 absolutely ruined 19th-century buildings that once housed the Navy Yard's senior officers. The Yard was closed in 1966, but ownership of the buildings on Admiral's Row was not transferred to the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (BNYDC) until 2012, by which time even getting near the buildings to assess their damage was determined to be perilous.

All the buildings have been deemed too far gone to salvage save two: Quarters B and the Timber Shed, which will most likely be spared for renovation. The rest will be leveled and redeveloped as a large grocery store and retail complex to serve the nearby housing projects, an area considered to be a food desert. The BNYDC estimates the redevelopment cost at about $100 million and has put out a call for proposals three times. In 2012, PA Developers were selected, but they had to be replaced due to a bribery scandal involving one of the firm's principles. In 2013, the Blumenfeld Development Group was chosen, but the firm was removed after it "failed to meet its end of the contract." In July of 2014, the BNYDC put out yet another request for proposals; it remains to be seen who will win the bid.

Tobacco Warehouse 

Tobacco Warehouse (photograph by Ed Costello/Flickr)

The Tobacco Warehouse was built in the 1870s by the Lorillard family as a custom inspections facility for goods coming in from the waterfront. The building was saved from demolition in the 1990s and, though roofless and windowless, has been used sporadically since then as an outdoor venue for performances and festivals, as well as a second location for the Williamsburg-based foodie bonanza Smorgasburg.

In 2011, the Brooklyn Bridge Development Corp. accepted a proposal from award-winning performing arts institution St. Ann's Warehouse to redevelop the building (well, accepted then rejected then accepted again). The new structure, which will cost around $30 million, will have two performance areas, a multi-use community space, and an open courtyard. Construction is expected to be finished in the fall of 2015; in the meantime, DumboNYC has some renderings of how it will eventually look. 

North Brother Island 

North Brother Island (photograph by Jessica Sheridan/Flickr)

This remains merely speculative, but even the potential rehabilitation of one of New York City's most fascinating islands is a big deal. North Brother, 20 acres off the Bronx coast near Riker's, was a quarantine hospital starting in 1885, famously housing Typhoid Mary off and on over the course of her life. It was also the site of the conflagration and shipwreck of the General Slocum, and was used as a drug treatment facility until the early 1960s. The island has been abandoned ever since, and is now teeming with wildlife, from invasive kudzu to previously endangered wild herons. It's a favorite haunt for urban explorers and lovers of ruin porn, but is strictly off-limits to the public.

However, Mark Levine, the City Council’s parks committee chair, would like to see that changed. “We want to start building the momentum and constituency for opening this up in some way,” Levine told the New York Times. At this point there's no actual plan to determine how to stabilize the island's more than 25 incredibly derelict buildings — even commissioning a study to assess what would need to be done would cost millions.

Offerings at the Palacio Municipal at La Calaca Festival (photograph by Reka Nyari)

David Metcalfe, author, researcher and founder of Liminal Analytics — Applied Research Collaborative — co-authored this piece. Dr. Andrew Chesnut is Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and is author of the only book on Saint Death in both Mexico and the US, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint. Metcalfe and Chesnut direct Skeletonsaint.com, a site dedicated to news and analysis of the fastest growing new religious movement in the Americas.

The season of death is at hand. Halloween and the Mexican death trinity of Day of the Dead, Catrina Calavera (Skeleton Dame), and Santa Muerte (Saint Death) engage millions of South and North Americans in rituals that reconnect us with our own mortality. Leaving aside the jack-o-lanterns and trick or treating of our own childhood in the United States, we will try to answer one of the two questions that invariably come up during our presentations on Santa Muerte. What is the relationship, if any, among Saint Death, Catrina Calavera, and Day of the Dead? The other question that always arises is "Do you believe in the Bony Lady?"

Let's first take a look at the member of the Mexican death trinity who has been in the limelight during the past three years, especially with her cameo appearance in the critically-acclaimed TV series, Breaking Bad. Santa Muerte is a Mexican folk saint who personifies death in the form a female skeleton. Whether as a votive candle, gold medallion, or statue, she is typically depicted as a Grim Reapress, wielding the same scythe and wearing a shroud similar to the Grim Reaper, her male ancestor. Folk saints, unlike official Catholic ones, are spirits of the dead considered holy for their miracle working powers. However, what really sets the Bony Lady apart from other folk saints is that for most devotees she is the personification of death itself and not of a deceased human being.

A Santa Muerte devotee commemorating Day of the Dead in Tutitlan, on the outskirts of Mexico City (photograph by Angus Fraser)

Family of Santa Muerte devotees commemorating Day of the Dead in Tutitlan, on the outskirts of Mexico City (photograph by Angus Fraser)

In Mexico and Latin America in general, such folk saints as Jesus Malverde, Juan Soldado, and San La Muerte (the Argentine cousin of Santa Muerte) have millions of devotees and are often petitioned more than the Catholic saints. These homegrown saints are united to their devotees by nationality and often by both locality and social class. A Mexico City street vendor explained the appeal of the skeleton saint to her saying, "She understands us because she is a battleaxe (cabrona) like us." In contrast, Mexicans would never refer to the Virgin of Guadalupe as a cabrona, which is also often used to mean "bitch." All the major shrines in Mexico and the U.S. celebrate annual feast days with the specific date varying. Doña Queta's historic shrine in the notorious barrio of Tepito will commemorate its thirteenth anniversary on Halloween. One of the most recent trends among devotees of Death on both sides of the border is to integrate the Bony Lady into Day of the Dead commemorations.

In the United States, All Hallows' Eve has taken on the darker image of Halloween, with haunted houses, horror movies, and the dead returning for trouble rather than tradition. However, in Latin America and Europe, where Catholic cultural influences have remained strong, the first and second of November continue to hold their ancient ties to festivals associated with sacred remembrance of the dead's continued presence in the world of the living. In Mexico, Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead,) which falls on November 1 and 2, is one of the most anticipated holidays of the year. It's a time to reconnect with deceased friends, family members, and ancestors in a festive spirit of remembrance and celebration.

Graves decorated at San Miguel for La Calaca Festival (photograph by Reka Nyari)

Offerings at the Old Cemetery at La Calaca Festival (photograph by Reka Nyari)

Sugar skulls and other offerings at La Calaca Festival (photograph by Reka Nyari)

Before the Spanish conquest, the Aztecs dedicated most of the month of August to their goddess of death, Mictecacihuatl. As part of the overarching suppression of indigenous religion, the Catholic Church exorcised Mictecacihuatl and moved the date to coincide with All Saints' Day (November 1), which is also known in Mexico as Day of the Innocents as it focuses on deceased infants and children, and All Souls' Day (November 2), which centers on departed adults. Visits to the cemetery to bring offerings to the dead, such as candles, flowers, and food, are common, along with offerings left at home altars. which often involve more festive celebrations including the striking sugar skulls, calaveras de azúcar, and pan de muerto (bread of the dead), which have become a familiar icons of the tradition. Adorned with the name of a deceased relative, the skulls are eaten as a reminder that death is not a bitter end, but rather a sweet continuation of the natural cycles of life.

Born around 1910, from the pen of the famed Mexican illustrator José Guadalupe Posada, Calavera Catrina is another skeleton that has become central to Mexico's cultural identity. As a satirical cartoon created to mock the early 20th-century Mexican upper classes, Catrina bears a remarkable likeness to images of Carmen Romero Rubio, the second wife of Porfirio Diaz, whose turbulent presidency was one of the main targets of Posada's mordant satire.

Family of Catrinas at La Calaca Festival (photograph by Reka Nyari)

Posada's popular illustrations were deeply embedded into the cultural context of the Mexican Revolution (1910-20), the first great revolt of the 20th century, which led to a new appreciation of the indigenous past. The symbolism of the skeleton, which in indigenous traditions throughout the Americas represents the continuation of life's cyclical turn, proved to be a potent and resonant image for Mexican cultural independence from its Eurocentric elite.

Although Posada's illustrations show skeletons dressed in European finery as a critique of his elite compatriots, by the time the famous Mexican muralist Diego Riviera included Calavera Catrina in his well-known work "Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda" ("Dream of a Sunday afternoon along Central Alameda") in 1948, she had become a symbol of the integration of pre-Hispanic and post-colonial ideals. Today, she remains an important icon of Mexican national identity, and speaks to the unique and fruitful cultural dialogue which continues in Latin America.

Statue in the city of Puebla, Mexico, dressed in seven colors, representing miracles on many fronts (photograph by Angus Fraser)

Photographs courtesy Santa Muerte devotee Christian Crowe of Santa Ana, California

The culture of Mexico is not alone in its remembrance of death, but it is unique in how, more often than not, these commemorations are more festive than somber. Whether it is under the scythe of Santa Muerte during the festivities of Dia de los Muertos, or in the "elegant" image of Calavera Catrina, death plays a central role in the daily lives of Mexicans, and continues to provide a potent image for the inevitable cycles of life. Running through it all is a sense of humor and empowerment, which takes the hard lessons of death and embraces them with a fullness that is often surprising to those unfamiliar with these traditions.

On a personal level, death becomes an image of rebirth and renewal, while in the wider culture the imagery and practices associated with these traditions keep the memory of the nation's turbulent history alive. For a nation with such striking disparities between rich and poor, death also becomes the great equalizer, where even billionaire Carlos Slim succumbs to Santa Muerte's leveling scythe. As they say in Mexico, "death is just and even-handed for everyone since we will all die." For many, this unalterable truth provides a strong reason to celebrate life while there is still time.

Skull with clock eyes at La Calaca Festival (photograph by Reka Nyari)

Argentina's most famous San La Muerte temple in the town of Empedrado, Corrientes (photograph by Fabiola Chesnut)

"Thanks, San La Muerte, for the favors received," plaque at the temple in Empedrado, Argentina (photograph by Fabiola Chesnut)

A version of this article previously appeared on the Huffington Post. 

Atlas Obscura at the Rogue Taxidermy Fair (all photographs by Steven Acres, visit http://stevenacr.es to view more of his work)

Transforming cast off creatures from roadkill to vintage discards, some contemporary taxidermists are reimagining the art of preservation. This October 5, Atlas Obscura co-presented a Rogue Taxidermy Fair with the fellow Brooklyn-based Morbid Anatomy in celebration of a new book on "rogue taxidermy."

Robert Marbury's Taxidermy Art: A Rogue’s Guide to the Work, the Culture, and How to Do It Yourself, published by Artisan Books, examines new approaches to taxidermy, which are breaking off from the traditions of hunting mounts and natural history museums, while maintaining the careful skills of the practice. The Rogue Taxidermy Fair at the Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn, brought together local and regional practitioners including the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, Caitlin T. McCormack who crochets skeletons contained in bell jars, Amber Maykut of Hoardaculture showcasing beautiful butterflies and tattooed frogs, Divya Anantharaman of Friends Forever Taxidermy with ethically-sourced taxidermy transformed with ecological specimens and beadery, and Daisy Tainton with anthropomorphic insect dioramas. 

Mike Zohn of Obscura Antiques & Oddities also brought to his booth a Ferris wheel of chipmunks that was once part of the defunct Dead Pals of Sam Sanfilippo housed in a funeral home in Wisconsin that included a whole cavalcade of critter taxidermy. Katie Innamorato of Afterlife Anatomy demonstrated for the crowd the careful process of squirrel taxidermy from specimen to detached skin, and the all-day event concluded with an incredible evening set by the Lucky Chops Brass Band (previously seen at our Cocktails in the Crypt evening) and a taxidermy trivia competition. Check out photographs from the fair below, and keep an eye on our events page for more unique adventures in New York City and beyond. 

Robert Marbury (at left), Atlas Obscura founder Dylan Thuras (at right), & the proud winner of the taxidermy trivia contest at center

Katie Innamorato of Afterlife Anatomy demonstrating squirrel taxidermy

Detail of the demonstration

Richard Santomauro Taxidermy

Peacock from Richard Santomauro Taxidermy

Divya Anantharaman of Friends Forever Taxidermy

Detail of the Friends Forever Taxidermy table

Robert Marbury & Daisy Tainton displaying an insect diorama

Curios from Daisy Tainton

Insect diorama by Daisy Tainton

Amber Maykut of Hoardaculture

A Ferris wheel of chipmunks, formerly part of the Dead Pals of Sam Sanfillippo, brought to the fair by Mike Zohn of Obscura Antiques & Oddities

Detail of the chipmunk Ferris wheel

Robert Kennedy Taxidermy's display

Crocheted skeletons by Caitlin T. McCormack

Crocheted skeleton by Caitlin T. McCormack

The Lucky Chops Brass Band

Lucky Chops Brass Band

All photographs by Steven Acres, visit http://stevenacr.es to view more of his work.

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