Away from the desk

Life & Travels

Some of my other passions are travel, world cultures, and long walks in places with no road access. Here is a little of what that has looked like.

Evans Harrell and his wife Mo Burke, smiling in a car on a sunny day — Mo and me, September 2025

At home

Mo

My wife, Mo Burke. We live in Atlanta, when we are in fact in Atlanta, which is less often than the mail carrier would prefer.

Between us we have a family that has scattered agreeably across the map and reconvenes for holidays, weddings, and the occasional expedition. I have two grown children, and the best trips are still the ones where somebody else in the party is a Harrell.

Trekking

High and quiet places

The wilderness habit started early and never wore off. The Southern Appalachians are the home range — Tray Mountain, the Smokies, Dolly Sods — but the trips that stay with you are the long ones above the treeline, where the arithmetic of food and water starts to matter.

Granite spires above a rocky, pine-scattered basin in the Wind River Range — The Wind River Range, Wyoming — granite the whole way up. 2018.

A hiker with a backpack pausing on a forested ridge, mountains behind — On the trail, Wind River Range.

A hiker resting beside a pack on bare rock at high altitude — A rest stop somewhere above ten thousand feet.

Open alpine tundra and boulder fields under a wide cloudy sky — Alpine tundra — a landscape that rewards walking slowly.

The Matterhorn against a clouded sky, seen from Zermatt — The Matterhorn, Switzerland, 2005.

Travels

Morocco

A 2008 trip to Marrakech, mostly spent on rooftops and in the medina. The craftsmanship is the thing — plaster, cedar, and tile worked into geometry of a sophistication that predates the vocabulary we now use to describe it.

Evans Harrell standing on a shaded rooftop terrace overlooking Marrakech — On a rooftop in the medina, Marrakech.

A colonnaded courtyard with carved capitals and tiled floor — Carved cedar, plaster, and tile around a courtyard.

Marrakech rooftops with satellite dishes and laundry, mountains in the distance — The city from above — satellite dishes, laundry, and the Atlas beyond.

Marrakech rooftops with a minaret rising in the distance — A minaret over the rooftops.

Evans Harrell standing beside an ornately carved stone building — Standing where somebody did the geometry by hand.

Travels

India

December 2004, largely in Karnataka — Bangalore, Mysore, and the roads in between.

A white domed mausoleum with minarets set in formal gardens — The Gumbaz at Srirangapatna, near Mysore.

A long avenue shaded by an arch of old rain trees — An avenue of old trees, shading the whole road.

The dense hanging aerial roots of an enormous banyan tree — A banyan doing what banyans do.

A large golden orb-weaver spider suspended at the center of its web — A golden orb-weaver, and a rather good piece of engineering.

Travels

The Galápagos

2019, on the volcanic western islands — Fernandina, Isabela, Santa Cruz. Everything alive there is either indifferent to you or mildly curious, which takes some getting used to.

Bright orange Sally Lightfoot crabs on dark volcanic rock at the water's edge — Sally Lightfoot crabs against the lava — the islands' best color scheme.

A marine iguana basking on pale volcanic rock — A marine iguana, entirely unbothered. Fernandina.

A pale pink hibiscus-like flower backlit against dark foliage — Urbina Bay, Isabela.

The full archive

Rather more than fits on one page

Bolivia, Spain, Costa Rica, Maine, Utah, Canada, the Smokies, Colorado, and thirty years of family holidays are all filed — with varying discipline — on my SmugMug.

Browse the photographs →