There’s great dignity in the mourning dove. Rarely does one demand attention. A pair’s gentle cooing is a pleasure, the whisper of parents trying not to wake the baby. The whir of their wings in flight (called sonation) recalls a wind-up toy. A couple of them, in velvety gray-brown with daubs of black low on […]
Miscellaneous
August 7-11, 2017 Ann has a hilarious exchange with Adam Rogers about ways in which we might strengthen the rigour of the social sciences, whose questionnaire-based conclusions Ann could shoot down “with a bow and arrow riding a fast horse in a high wind.” Those IPCC reports that represent the scientific consensus on climate change […]
The iPad on my brother’s lap shows our plane as an icon moving across the landscape. Through our headsets, my brother explains that the circle surrounding the plane on the map represents our gliding range. Anything outside that circle would be too far for the single-engine Mooney to reach if all went suddenly silent. So […]
This post ran originally in November of 2014, about excavating the desk of a prominent ice researcher at a small camp in Greenland. The researcher, Konrad Steffen, appears alongside Al Gore in the film and book “An Inconvenient Sequel,” which just released. With record high temperatures sweeping the country, enjoy some ice and snow. Earlier […]
July 31 – August 4, 2017 Jessa’s on a trip that’s so far out in the back of beyond that it needs a guide. The guide doesn’t show. But nobody quits. Michelle finds a splendid metaphor for surviving ridiculously unpleasant situations: imitate the reindeer and assume Arctic resignation. I redux the struggles that Helen and […]
A couple of years ago I climbed Flattop Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park with my dad. I’m back in Colorado this week, again with family, so I thought it was a good time to recall that hike. The Milky Way hung overhead. The lights from the far-off plains made a faint glow in the […]
Camping and canoeing are all about self-sufficiency. The sensation of our own competence on the land lets us feel our own strength directly, rather than through oblique measures of success like social status or money. So it’s hard to accept when some trips are just so out of our realm that they require a guide. […]
July 24-28, 2017 This week LWON responds once again to the ludicrous alarmism of Shark Week. Our fifth annual Snark Week reveals the viciousness lurking in the most adorable of animals, if you’ll only lean in closely enough to hear their villainous scheming. Raccoons, for instance, have had it in for us since they first […]
