I was walking my dog yesterday when I heard them. Sandhill cranes, their distinctive trill high overhead. It’s a few weeks early for them to be migrating through already, but it’s been a scary dry, warm winter and everything is off. So I stopped to listen and look up. It took a minute to find […]
In May of 2025, I went to Mountainfilm in Telluride with my BFF Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. We watched numerous amazing films, but there’s one that continues to haunt me, eight months later. Mr. Nobody Against Putin is a documentary filmed by Pavel (Pasha) Talankin. Here’s the synopsis published in the festival guide: Pasha is a […]
For a few years now, I’ve been going through my annual list of books read and picking my favorites. (Here’s 2024 and 2022. I guess I didn’t share my list in 2023, though I did contribute to some of LWON’s best of the year lists.) This year, wow! I read a lot of really great […]
I never knew it needed explaining until someone asked me — why is singletrack so much more fun than wider trails like double track or dirt roads? We’re talking here about mountain biking and the allure of the singletrack trail — a narrow path, usually 18 to 24 inches wide, that meanders through a given terrain. […]
I used to think AI was a hyped-up distraction. I thought it would do a clumsy job of things, and be annoying, but mostly harmless. I’ve changed my mind. What initiated my change of mind was playing around with some AI tools. After trying out chatGPT and Google’s AI tool, I’ve now come to the […]
Our little farm is nestled in a pinyon juniper habitat that we share with lots of other creatures. Often enough, we encounter these animals close up. Sightings of foxes, coyotes, deer, elk and turkeys are so commonplace as to have become almost (but not quite) uninteresting. Other creatures we see mostly by the signs they […]
This is an annual post, with apologies to Colin Nissan. I don’t know about you, but I have been waiting all year to wrap my hands around some tasty, tender tomatoes and arrange them in colorful patterns on my kitchen counter. That shit is going to look like the embodiment of late summer. I’m dusting off […]
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of visiting CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) with a group of STEM-curious high school kids. Our guide on the visit was Shirajum Monira, a tiny, dark-haired woman, who spoke gently as she walked us through numerous exhibits, experimental facilities and scientific devices. She spoke patiently and […]
