Unusual dust storms have been rolling out of the Southwest and flying across where I live in Colorado, a state that doesn’t appreciate brown or red in its snow. These storms are vectors of change, fingers of desertification creeping up into better-watered country. I’ve lived near the upper ends of the Gunnison River in […]
Traveling in the north country, the open-skied Arctic of North America, you can’t help thinking of the first people and their journey across the Bering Land Bridge to this side of the world. They would have arrived in what is now Alaska and the adjoining Yukon Territory. The landscape has not changed much in the […]
The first tips of yellow leaves are showing among aspens and cottonwoods in western Colorado. Summer, though still plenty warm, is beginning to turn. You think about what inevitably comes, leaves dropping, opening the stage for snow and ice. You imagine what it will be like to hear the crunch of it every time you […]
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 ahead of time for there being a […]