The Last Word

January 8-12, 2018 Michelle reduxes a post about a word she made up to describe daffodils that bloom during false springs—and wonders what other words the world needs these days. Honestly, all the Snowpocalypses and Snowzillas of recent years are starting to run together. If we’re going to keep naming nature in the Anthropocene, we need to branch out. Erik snorkels on […]

The Last Word

December 25-29 The People of LWON took a short winter’s nap this week and revisited a few favorite posts from years past. On Monday, Erik writes about pilgrimages, both his own and others’. I believe in the open road and the open air and people together on a journey and sore legs and a rejuvenated […]

The Last Word

December 18-22, 2017 The People of LWON start the week with our recommendations for holiday binge-watching. You’re welcome. Guest Mary Caperton Morton tells a story about hiking in Bears Ears National Monument, which had its acreage cut by 85 percent earlier this month. As the canyon opened up, our side canyon nearing the confluence with […]

Redux: Fired Up

Two years ago, I wrote a post about learning how to make fire with a bow drill, and how it was one of the many frustrating things about fire: that it’s hard to make when you need it, and hard to get rid of when you don’t want it to burn. Now yet another California […]

The Last Word

The Last Word November 20-24, 2017 Sarah changed her landscape, and finds herself changed. I never meant to be one of those people who would trade redrock bones of desert and mountain crags and the velvet nakedness of tundra for the claustrophobic press of forest. For a place so green and eager to grow that […]

The Last Word

There is no roadmap for confronting a neighbor in the grocery store about a sexual assault that happened twenty years ago. Cassie, on Monday. On a happier note, we’ve got a new Person of LWON. Rebecca Boyle sees her bare-branched pin oak and thinks asteroids. Apart from humans, maybe, trees are the best form of life […]

The Last Word

October 2-6, 2017 The People of LWON start off the week with a letter to The Modern Talking website. The site vanished around the same time. Coincidence? It’s still fire season, and Jenny is the Lorax, she speaks for the trees. We don’t tend to think of a body count when plants are the victims, […]