I’m not at the totality today, and it’s been gnawing at me. Between 1 and 7 million people are estimated to witness this swath of darkness across the middle of North America from coast to coast. I live about an eight-hour drive away, and I’ve heard totality is a mystical experience, once in a lifetime. […]
This post ran originally in November of 2014, about excavating the desk of a prominent ice researcher at a small camp in Greenland. The researcher, Konrad Steffen, appears alongside Al Gore in the film and book “An Inconvenient Sequel,” which just released. With record high temperatures sweeping the country, enjoy some ice and snow. Earlier […]
A treasure hunter recently died near the Rio Grande in New Mexico. His body turned up in the backcountry after he was reported missing. This is the second death of a treasure hunter looking for an ornate bronze chest said to be hidden somewhere between Santa Fe and Canada by multi-millionaire artifact collector Forrest Fenn. […]
June 26-29, 2017 Ann turns a line in the earth into a geologic haiku, feeling her way along the remains of a coastline 200 million years old. On one side of this line lies an “unholy cat’s breakfast of hard metamorphic rocks” and to the other is “boring clay and mud and sand that took […]
This post originally appeared March 7, 2013. In the mail yesterday I received a grizzly bear skull from an acquaintance and taxidermist in Soldotna, Alaska. Expertly cleaned down to chalk-white bone and glistening, thumb-sized canines, it was the size and general shape of a football, and as smooth as sanded wood. My friend had apologized […]
“There is something to be said for being with your teenage daughter and not showering for six days,” a mother told me recently. Daiva had just gotten back from a trip to Death Valley with her 16-year-old daughter where they cooked on a backpack stove and climbed over dunes. They drove to the farthest ends of […]
I’ve been losing socks lately. One at a time. I correlate this with my state of life and work: picking up and dropping off kids, scheduling plane flights and cross-country drives, article deadlines, a final book manuscript due tomorrow, a blog post tonight. This week, I’m teaching 15 high school classes on the writing process, why we […]
March 13-17 Ann started the week with a Q and A with Sharon Weinberger author of The Imagineers of War, unraveling the history of DARPA, making a secretive weapon-creation agency not so secret, including the rise of the jet pack. Bring your fire retardant pants! Jessa welcomed the new robot overlords, introducing us to […]