They were dark forms scattered up and down the beach. One here, three there, a pair just beyond them. Their larger size distinguished them from the other shorebirds, drawing our attention. “What are they?” my dad asked. “Whimbrels,” I said. We were at Fort Stevens, a few miles outside of Astoria, Oregon, my hometown. My […]
Earth
First snowmelt, and a month of dry, but the rain finally comes, and everything is flowers, for a time.
Part of a series of ‘penspective’ posts using a pen for scale The earth is a producer of oddities. Crystals curl around each other like fiber optics and groundwater stains rock like Van Gogh. Geologic byproducts come out faster than Linnaeus could name off species, lava bombs, pseudomorphs, barites that look like roses, and copper […]
This post began with a question from my dear friend, the novelist and documentary filmmaker George Lerner. Looking over two years of footage from South Texas, I noticed something striking: I have lots and lots of glorious images filmed around sunset, but scant few decent shots at sunrise. Why is this, I wondered — is […]
High above the place where you’re reading this, maybe many miles away or, if you’re lucky, just outside your door, there is a strange and dangerous realm. Few dare to venture there, and many who do are unprepared for what they’ll encounter. Even fewer live in this harsh realm, especially all the time. It is […]
Given the choice, I wouldn’t be a bear, though it’s tempting to skip this dark season and live off my fat. Far below the metabolic plane of sleep, my body would be as cold as death to the touch. Parts of the brain that dart about in REM sleep are turned off, brain functions reduced […]
In this year of darkness, today brings something to celebrate. Winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, which means the light will finally start returning. And this year, the first day of winter also marks a special celestial event — the Jupiter-Saturn Great Conjunction. Imagine that our solar system is a racetrack, and […]
My wife weighs in on the mysterious reflective object that appeared and a week later disappeared in the southern Utah desert. She says if this tower is technically neither an obelisk nor a monolith, why not call it a monolisk, or an obelith? Monoöbelisk. Two days after its discovery by a helicopter pilot hauling wildlife […]