aislin fall •

Recap | 2025 This was the year that I started to take my foot off the gas pedal of travel. I only went to nine countries, only took photographs in seven of them (which is weird to think about). Five new ones, four repeats. I thought 2025 would be the year I fully stepped away from full-time travel. Began the daunting process of building a home in the mountains and reorienting my identity around something other than continual movement. Instead, I packed up my things and strapped on my backpack once again. Winding down is a long, slow road. What can I say about that year? I don’t think I got what I wanted. I started 2025 feeling lost, and then continued to feel lost and loss in the middle. When the clocks ran out of minutes and the horizon along Rio de Janeiro burst into fireworks, I knew I was doing what I needed to do, but still wondered at the cost. The clocks had run out of minutes yet they kept ticking in my head. I can hear them now. Clocks ticking. Compass spinning. My certainty contains so much uncertainty. This year, I hope for change. But you know what they say. If you want different outcomes, you need to do different things. I still love this life, this meandering path through mountains and deserts and jungles and coasts and cities where I don’t speak the language. Some days, I feel so far from done. Other days, I mostly feel tired. - #2025recap #travelphotography #wandertheworld

Larch season is something special. It comes and goes so quickly in the Rockies. I’m grateful that my quick trip to the mountains last month overlapped with the brilliant ponderosas. 💛 - Pictures from September 2025. AB, Canada. - Hiking, larch season, ponderosa pines, autumn colours, Rocky Mountains.

I feel such a sense of continuity in these mountains. I can see my own story mirrored in the curvature of the ridge lines. The path that brought me here, though oftentimes overgrown and indistinguishable, except to the foxes and scrub jays that always seem to know the way. I can see the cliffs that left me breathless, the long dark valleys travelled under a hopeful spread of stars. The summits where I stood on top of the world. The distant peaks that told me to keep going. The falls, the heartbreaks, the triumphs, the pitch black midnights, the ecstatic dawns. Listen: it’s all such a mystery to me. This life, the world, even myself. I am constantly bewildered and frequently terrified. I don’t understand how any of this came to be and I am forever trying to figure out what to do with it. What do I do with it? I keep going. I look to the mountains, hoping they will show me what to do next. - Pictures from September 2025. AB, Canada. - Hiking, mountain summits, autumn sunset, outdoor adventure, Rocky mountains.

I used to get a crippling fret that I wasn’t doing enough. That I was failing to show up fully for my life and wring every golden drop from each and every day. The world is magic, there is so much to do, and there’s no getting any of this time back. So I gotta spend it. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush so catch me running through the woods with clawing hands, coughing feathers, trying to contain a flock within my lungs. I was so hungry. My identity shaped around that hunger. Wore it like my tattoo. Do more so you can be more. I’m not saying this has changed. Eased some, maybe. But there is still a fluttering beast in my chest, saying I think there’s more to this. So I go seeking. Up mountains. Across continents. Under stars. In moments of presence with friends. I know how to stop and take it in, though. For a moment (or a sunset), the thing with wings, which might be my soul, sits quietly in my body, looks around, and says this, this is it. - Pictures from September 2025. AB, Canada. - Hiking with friends, Rocky Mountains, sunset, autumn.

If you’re the kind of person that will drive 12 hours over more than 1,000 kilometres to hike 3 hours through grizzly country to see a mountain at sunset, then you’re probably my kind of person. - I have a lot of mixed feelings about this app... and by “mixed,” I really mean, I have a lot of negative feelings about this app. I’ve deleted it for months at a time with no regrets. Yet, even still, I have met a bunch of really groovy, really shiny people that I never would have encountered otherwise simply by sharing silly pictures and stories from my phone. And that’s something. That’s a whole lot of something. - Pictures from September 2025. AB, Canada. - Hiking with friends, rocky mountains, autumn sunset. #hikingadventures #outdoorphotography #outdoorportraits #trailtosummit #albertacanada

Another summer comes and goes. It seems like I have been chasing this season for years—skipping continents, craving sunlight, relentlessly seeking those endless evenings when everything seems possible and golden. This summer was a weird one. Shaken from my usual rhythms, yet still tried to find something shiny in the cracks. Did I? Now, at the end, feet edging another closing chapter, I’m not sure. But I believe nothing is wasted in this life. I also believe that you have to step away from something in order to really, truly choose it. So, I stepped away this summer. I learned a thing or two. But it’s time to get back. Get back to the road, get back to the mountains, get back to myself. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, I have so many miles to roam. - Pictures from August 2025. 📍 BC, Canada. - Mini camping trip, mountain hiking, summer sunset. #explorecanada #britishcolumbiacanada #intothemountains #sunsetoftheday

December 2023. A collection of my favourite golden shots. - Looking back, a year later, I am shocked at the distance between what I thought I knew then and what I know now. At the time, I believed I was, more or less, happy and healed and whole and back to the original version of myself. Now that a whole year has passed and I actually am on the other side of that vast prairie called healing, it’s so obvious that I still had so far to go. There were still so many miles to tread. Whole landscapes that I hadn’t yet seen the faces of. Storms not to be hidden from. Blue skies and sunshine and sunburns that prickle with this reminder: you are alive, you are here, you are alive, you are here. - December 2023 was the first full month in my van in New Zealand. I roadtripped around Wanaka, ventured up to Mt Cook, went to the West Coast, and drove through modest fords going to Mt. Aspiring with @victoriaecclestone leading the way in her own van. It was a dream fulfilled and the balm I was desperate for. When I didn’t know what else to do, I decided to do this. Isn’t that how it always starts? - Pictures from Dec 2023 📍 Around Wanaka, NZ - #nztravel #beautifulnewzealand #mountainphotography #girlswhohike #roamearth

November 17th was the one year anniversary of buying my van in New Zealand, which I then sold in May after six months under the Southern hemisphere sun. I don’t have many big ticket dreams, especially where travel is concerned. I just follow where the road twists. But I dreamed of chasing roads in New Zealand— had ever since spending six weeks moving rental cars across the country in 2016. And then, two years ago, I was in a hotel room in Vietnam and life was falling apart. I made the decision because I needed to do something. I neded a plan, a balm, a respite, some solution that could survive the inferno devouring the other life I had tried to build. Listen: my world was on fire. So I said: I am going to New Zealand. I’m going to get a van. I’m going to rebuild. I went to New Zealand. I bought the van. I planted flowers in the soot, Watched the fireweed sprout. It was one of the most transformational chapters of my life. Those six months set everything else in motion. When I arrived, I prophesized this: I will not leave the same person as when I arrived. That much is true. I found something on those two-lane highways, those lupine drenched meadows, those nights under a whole splattering of different stars. The friends I made, the trails I walked, the mountains I threw myself into, the home I came to love but did not want to keep, the anger that brought the reckoning, the joy that re-ignited my nerves. This was what I wanted. The magic I asked for. What a glorious thing. And so, to say the least, I’m endlessly grateful for New Zealand and my little van, Hattie. - Pictures from Nov 2023 - May 2024 📍 New Zealand . . . . . #newzealandtrip #vanlifenz #vanlifejourney #roamingwomen #dirtbagdiaries

And the resounding song of spring brays: it begins again it begins again it begins again. (And there is nothing optional about this; the seasons always give way; but how beautiful, isn’t it, to be part of these planetary rhythms; to find your place amongst them.) - With: @ellepiggott Shot: November 2023 Wanaka, New Zealand . . . . . #portraitphotograph #womenportraits #blackandwhiteportrait

The first time I flew over braids. When I couldn’t believe my eyes; too amazed to think clearly about shots. The rivers glistening in the last light, all glacial blue and ethereal. Shout-out to @codymbaker for driving us all the way out to this spot despite not having a drone himself. - Shot: November 2023 Lake Pukaki, New Zealand . . . . . #newzealand #aorakimountcook #glacialriver #landscapephoto #mountainscape

When I came to New Zealand, I was a field ripped of flowers and fruit. I was all fallow. Possibilities but neither sprout nor root. Simply soil ripe for the planting so I prayed for a season of bounty with dirt under my nails and seeds soaking beneath my tongue. I asked for rebirth under sunshine and watery skies, fresh air and pollinators’ kiss. Once, a lover told me how he would hold seeds in his mouth before planting. Infuse them with his life force and this familiar prayer: Let me grow. So I tucked my hopes and dreams and wishes behind my front teeth. Soaked them in this earnest desire. Prayed that their shells would crack and love would soon blossom. And hasn’t love filled this landscape in the months since? Isn’t love everywhere? It’s amazing how life knows just what to do with all this space. It rushes in again. To life, everything is a garden about to bloom. All it needs is a little time. - Shot: November 2023 Photos of me shot by: @joannehollings Lake Pukaki, New Zealand . . . . . #purenz #aorakimountcook #lupines #selfportraits #womenwhowander

I took these during my first visit to the Mount Cook area. I just wrapped up my fourth. To be honest, I didn’t anticipate spending so much time here yet I found myself again and again driving this road. Walking these paths. Climbing these mountains. Now, I have seen this landscape in so many different colours. Green and bursting with lupine blooms in spring, then the honey-brown of summer dryness, finally autumn’s fiery red and orange. I can trace myself through these seasons, so clearly, like I always try to, hoping to understand where I came from and how I got here and what it means. - Shot: November 2023 Lake Pukaki, New Zealand . . . . . #purenewzealand #newzealandtrip #aorakimountcook #peterslookout