Redux: What Destruction Has Wrought

In 2014 I wrote about backpacking through live lava flows in Hawaii. The experience was remarkable, and the man who showed us the way has since watched his own house burn, its remnants consumed by molten rock, something he said he thoroughly enjoyed. On that journey, I threw a penny into live lava, expecting it to […]

Dig at Homolovi

Today you get a poem, or prose with line breaks, about an archaeological dig and what happened there. Please take this post with a grain of salt, or sand, and enjoy.   East of Winslow, a tarp tied at six points pumps like an enormous drum Wind does not stop, not even to breathe, Hot […]

Listening to the Weather

When Matt McCorkle was growing up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, his dad often listened to the automated broadcasts from the local NOAA weather station. “The soundscape of my childhood was that little weather robot,” McCorkle remembers. Now an audio engineer and sound designer, McCorkle has worked with musicians including John Legend and Laura Izibor, and was […]

Another Day on Red Mountain Pass

Driving home through the bottom of Colorado you can’t help hitting mountains. A jigsaw puzzle of passes lies ahead. In the winter, choose your poison, Lizard Head, Wolf Creek, or, in the middle, the dangerous one. The route we took last week put us through the middle route, a chain of two passes leading to […]

Following the Fall Line

Winter’s here, maybe forever, and we’re having the usual Fall Line storms.  We have Fall Line storms in the summer too but winter’s are more dramatic.  Because Baltimore is perched right on the Fall Line, colder to the left, warmer to the right, our normal storm is snow, then ice, then rain, then ice, then […]

To Drink Or Not To Drink?

This week, a headline literally* gave me whiplash. The loss of 1,600 points on the Dow? No, don’t be silly. Another government shutdown? No, not that one either. I mean the big news. Backpackers no longer have to filter their water. Because there’s nothing in the water that can hurt them! Wow, right? Like many outdoor […]

The Philosophy of Weather

Last Friday night the Boston runway looked like an Arctic landing, bits of tarmac barely visible through sheets of blowing snow. I had a good view of the runway with the plane tipping like a seesaw, coming in on the tail of an explosive cyclogenesis, or bombogenesis, media-shortened to a bomb cyclone. This unusual storm […]