There’s a little patch of horror growing along my weekly drive, a strange blossoming on the side of the highway. People can’t stop pulling over for it. Flowers have appeared in profusion, alpine firecrackers of penstemon and some blue-hooded species, maybe an Aconite, wolfsbane, not one I know because they are invasives seeded across a […]
Nature
This post originally ran January 5, 2016 In the quarter light of a few remaining bulbs in a decommissioned hall of the Smithsonian, Kirk Johnson, the museum director, pushed back drapes of clear plastic. The National Fossil Halls was being undressed for demolition, dioramas and murals half torn down, everything had to go. In his […]
Earlier this month, a pinpoint landslide let loose onto a highway near where I live in southwest Colorado. No homes were destroyed. No cars were crushed, though three were narrowly missed. One pickup punched into reverse, its body hammered with rocks, occupants safe. What is significant is the tonnage of two boulders that tumbled a […]
I’ve prayed for rain many times, thirsty in the desert, craving a flash flood in a remote canyon. Watching rain fall, silky virga growing legs and touching ground, is worth any petition. I don’t know if prayers work. I’ve been a supplicant in the face of an oncoming thunderstorm only to see it make a […]
Millions of years ago, there they were. Floating around, taking in the sights as much as a single-celled organism can, turning carbon dioxide into oxygen, supporting the food chain—diatoms did all the things that they still do now. And then, they died. When they died, they drifted down to the bottoms of lakes and […]
This cat is celestial. Brought to the house on a sled down a snowed-in road, he arrived in the deepest winter I’d seen in years. Fresh from a shelter, he entered our home wide-eyed, a couple years old, sniffing everything. My girlfriend said he was perfect. The year before had been hard. We’d lost four […]
It is spring in the mountains, for I have seen my first trillium. These extremely elegant woodland flowers are called trilliums because they have just three lovely petals. They are also known as “wake robin” because they traditionally bloom in little patches of sunlight in the forest around the same time the spring robins appear. […]
The marmoset looked unlikely on the filing cabinet. It reclined on a piece of poster board, its skinny arms folded across its chest. Its cotton-stuffed eyes stared at the low, tiled ceiling. The specimen room smelled strongly of tea and cornmeal. Carina pulled the handle of a taller cabinet, and Mo and I leaned in. […]
