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Day #1 of Seven Marty Essen Books in Seven Days, featured in order of publication. We start with the six-time award-winning classic, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. “This is a wonderful book—a labor of love—that describes in soul-stirring language what it is like to live with the people, the animals, the birds, […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4659: As anyone who has read my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, or seen my college show, Around the World in 90 Minutes, knows, my wife, Deb, and I were attacked by a hippo on the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe. The hippo literally bit through […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4648: The expedition to Antarctica Deb and I did many years ago for my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, was absolutely magical. We’ve discussed doing it again, but we know that trying to recreate magic like that seldom works. Then, this week, we learned that […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4639: Being that this is photo 4,639, when I go through my photo files each morning to decide what to post, sometimes it’s frustrating finding something of high quality that I haven’t posted before. That’s especially the case when I go through the photos I took while working on my […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4620: For my final picture of the year, I’m posting the untouched photo for the cover of the First Edition of my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. That’s a tailless whip scorpion on my face, and my wife, Deb, shot the photo in the Amazon […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4541: Deb and I have enjoyed two long camping trips into Canada with our dogs. The first was in 2002, when Deb and I took Kate and Annie on a 5,572-mile-long adventure to the very top of Canada, which became part of my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4514: This tail belongs to a gray whale named Indigo (read on to learn how I know that). While working on my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, Deb and I experienced multiple close-up humpback whale encounters off the coast of Antarctica. The whales would approach […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4500: In 2002, Deb and I and our dogs, Kate and Annie, traveled to the top of Canada in a 5,572 mile-long adventure that became the North American chapter in my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. That trip was as much for our dogs as […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4496: A short excerpt from the Australia chapter in my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, explains this photo: A few of the caves had entrances large enough for a human to squeeze through. Reaching the small chambers, however, would have required dropping through layers of […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4491: This is a tiny section of the Porcupine caribou migration, the longest terrestrial migration of any animal on Earth. I shot this photo in 2002, while traveling for my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. This spot is in Canada’s Northwest Territories, which, unfortunately, is […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4490: I photographed this gorgeous elk on Deb’s and my epic trip to the top of Canada for my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. For many months my wife and I have been planning routes and acquiring new gear to redo that adventure this fall. […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4482: This is a scenic shot from somewhere on Deb’s and my epic journey to the top of Canada for my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. We’ve been hoping to redo that 5,572 mile-long adventure for many years. For the past year, we’ve really gotten […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4464: This was one of the first campsites on Deb’s and my epic trip to the top of Canada for my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. Ever since, Deb and I have hoped to redo that 5,572 mile-long adventure. We were going to do it […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4452: from the Borneo chapter of Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents: One creature that did follow a schedule was an insect called a “six o’clock cicada.” I was familiar with a variety of cicadas but had no idea an individual species could accurately tell time. According to […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4440: For the North American continent adventure in my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, Deb and I and our two dogs drove from Montana all the way to the top of Canada and back. That drive was longer than driving from Los Angeles to New […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4417: The following short excerpt is from my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. For this adventure, Deb and I are on the island of Borneo, and Stephen is our guide from the Dusun Segama tribe: Eventually we rose to our feet and started toward the […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4415: The following short excerpt is from my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents: Late Thursday, Deb and I had the privilege of being the first spotters of the largest elk on Earth. Okay, Deb spotted it without my help, and it probably wasn’t the world’s […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4406: It’s been 21 years since Deb’s and my epic trip to the top of Canada, which was featured in my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. The drive from Montana is longer than driving from New York City to Los Angeles and back. This photo […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4378: The following two paragraphs from my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, explain this shot: One of our stops included the twelfth-century walled city of La Villa de Castrotorafe. I had spotted the city from the highway and turned onto a dirt road that led […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4363: I shot this photo at the beginning of one of Deb’s and my biggest adventures. We were with the Iban tribe (a tribe once famous for headhunting), on the island of Borneo. On the far side of this lake is the AI River (AI means “water” in the Iban […]
