Sometimes I burrow so deep into internet rabbit holes that I'll begin to wonder about the world I live in. And something I've recently dug into are the effects a thinner atmosphere has on the body.

It all started from a YouTube video in my Recommended where adrenaline seekers had died from a multitude of conditions when trekking up the treacherous Mount Everest. One of them being the scarcity of oxygen.

A thinner atmosphere is nothing new to me though.

It was back in 11th grade when I scored a summer trip to study geology in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana of the Northwest United States. We were a few days into hiking and suddenly I was overcome with nausea. I couldn’t stand straight and would have these vomiting fits. Everything had felt like a blur, but I did remember my chaperones telling me that I had altitude sickness. A condition caused by not being acclimated to higher elevations.

Since then I’ve just been taking life easy down here in Southeast Louisiana where the air is thick with humidity. And you know, it isn't really something I've thought about until watching that video, but I then considered:

What is it like being acclimated to living in places like New Orleans where it’s the opposite? Where the atmosphere is naturally heavy and clings to our bodies like a second skin?

Louisiana's thick atmosphere can feel very different depending on the seasons. So I began taking note of how it felt through my medium of choice: snapshot photography.

snap!

Springtime is brief, mildly hot, yet also cool from constant showers. While Summer’s scorching heat can be so unbearable that existing itself becomes laborious. When temperatures of that caliber happen consistently, hurricanes will brew in the Gulf of Mexico. Bringing with them flood water, swamp creatures, and power outages that exacerbate the horror of it all even more. And with Autumn and Winter there are remnants of summer heat and a six month stretch of wet-cold temperatures that penetrate the skin until they chill the bones.

I remember this hot day.

Before the sun could wreak havoc on New Orleans, I dropped my fiancée off to work and took care of some errands on the Westbank. Once finished that afternoon, I then booked it to the French Quarter to waste time until she was ready to be picked up. And I didn't have a specific destination. I just wanted to wander. Go wherever my legs would take me in the sunny streets.

I first parked inside the Canal Place garage to traverse the shopping mall and observe its dizzying corridors and numerous clothing stores I couldn't ever imagine having the money for. Although, there was something precious I could get: still-life’s of capitalist society.

Department stores are gold mines for them. How could I not take advantage of it? They for sure take advantage of consumers’ propensity to throw money at them. I'll gladly continue my snapshotting of mannequins and other fashionable products.

And this was only the start of my journey. I still had to go out in the heat.

Just like me, New Orleans folk steadily dawdled about in the quarter as if they were looking for something. Like this Buddhist monk I happened upon near the Mississippi.

A photograph like this could fool anyone into thinking I was abroad in Tibet.

…

When I hit the CBD days later, wet-cold weather arrived. Everything shined and the people were alive. I was politely greeted countless times with How you doin’? from passersby and I smelled coffee beans, fried foods, (likely chicken) and rain water; and in addition were the wailing sirens of an ambulance and loudmouths yelling into corner stores. I kept moving down Canal Street, observing more loiterers and tourists smoking cigarettes and pointing to their next destination.

I could feel it. I was in a calm jungle. The danger, the excitement. Close, visible.

I now look forward to what every season brings. It’s exhilarating.