Eagle Interview: Atlas Obscura editor, author Ella Morton
Ella Morton: To Explore. To Dream. To Discover.
Two days before Christmas I conducted the longest, coldest and most physically demanding interview of 2016. Not that I’m complaining; on the contrary: the interview left me both exhausted and exhilarated. Exhausted as after a particularly strenuous workout at the gym and exhilarated as in returning from a fascinating voyage of discovery. Only in this case it was a voyage of discovery to a wastewater treatment plant, roughly five miles from my apartment.
Reader, let me explain:
Last November, while browsing the shelves at WORD, an excellent independent bookstore in Greenpoint, I came across “Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders,” published by Workman in September 2016. Opening the book to a random page, I read the entry about “Lyon’s Secret Alleyways” in the Vieux-Lyon and Croix-Rousse neighborhoods. Now I had been to the gastronomical capital of France on several occasions and thought that I knew the city fairly well. But these traboules — alleyways and staircases — were a revelation. Then I flipped to the “New World” section and discovered the Oasis Bordello Museum in Wallace, Idaho (mildly titillating). After that, it was the Kyaiktiyo Balancing Pagoda in Myanmar (truly amazing).