I broke a pot the other day, not just any pot but a ceramic Acoma vessel I inherited after my father died decades ago. I snatched something from the shelf, barely tapping the little seed jar, its mouth big enough for a finger, maybe two. It barely rocked one way and then the other, energy […]
Craig
When one of the founders of conservation biology passed this week at 84, I heard it was peaceful, that he was ready. I imagine Michael Soulé’s heart and breath stopping and an incredible release of feathers and bones, colors of a million beetles, a rush of eyes of countless shapes. You might say he ushered […]
May 20, 2020, is our anniversary, and we celebrated by writing postcards to ourselves in May 20, 2010. Today, Craig, Emily, and Helen reassure their 10-years-younger selves. And Sally…I wouldn’t call it reassuring exactly? Craig Childs You don’t want to know. You’d overthink it and plan inappropriately. Let it come. You’re getting back from the […]
Wallace Stegner wrote, “Seen in geological perspective, we are fossils in the making, to be eventually exposed again for the puzzlement of creatures of later eras.” That’s if you’re astronomically lucky. Most of us turn to dust or ash, and the bones we leave are eaten by roots. Few get to be fossils. If you’re interested […]
Not long ago, a friend who lives nearby, a skilled hunter of arrowheads, found a beautiful fluted spear point. It came from between his house and mine, along a ditch. The find was stunning, what I think has to be Clovis technology from 13,000 years ago, its point as sharp as the day it was […]
Arizona winter night, stars over pines, my buddy and I were heading for a hot tub on the outskirts of Flagstaff when a phone rang. It was a mutual friend, Jayme Dittmar, a dog musher on a 1,300-mile expedition by dog sled from Nome, Alaska, to the village of Utqiagvik on Point Barrow. She was […]
This happened the other day not far from where I live. Boulders fall all the time around here, highways regularly blocked. This time, the wording is what stuck. The local sheriff’s post went viral when this fallen obstacle was described as a “large boulder the size of a small boulder.” With those words, this 10,000-pound […]
I found this ill-cared-for painting from 1976, when I was nine, of a spaceship either taking off or landing on a barren world. This was before Star Wars, but I was well-steeped in forbidden worlds and Star Trek. I dreamed of alien planets, their skies red or green, their landscapes sere and wind-torn. I stared […]