This week came with heartening news in the frog world. An Australian study showed that if you offer frogs a sauna in a greenhouse, it allows them to recover from the fungal disease that has played a role in 90 species extinctions so far. The greatest loss of biodiversity ever attributed to a single disease, […]
Miscellaneous
This post ran ten years ago, about a landscape that existed where the Bering Sea now lies, and how humans have been plying it from then till now. Living far inland in a desert environment, I don’t think of the sea often, but when I do, my mind flies to this tundra island, once the […]
This is from April 17, 2017. Since then other irreplaceable neighbors have moved away, in particular, two who were my age, a little older, who moved into retirement places. I miss them because of their own lively, interesting, lovely selves but also because I felt they were a protection, that as long as I could […]
I was at the Seattle Pride parade last weekend, where I saw multiple people wearing t-shirts that said “Y’all means All.” It reminded me of how my husband got me using this gender-neutral, inclusive word. This post first ran a few years ago, and it’s as relevant as ever. Most people don’t adopt a new […]
Almost 15 years ago I traveled to a polar ice sheet with two key researchers who have since passed away. First, José Rial, who I followed to Greenland, was taken by cancer. His death was followed by his friend Konrad Steffen, one of the great Arctic ice scientists and explorers, who fell into a crevasse […]
I keep saying I’m done writing about buggy things for a while and will address something more scientifically pressing, but here we go again. Because periodically in the summer, a house centipede rears its skittering self, scooting out from under the fridge or appearing out of nowhere on the bathroom wall. I profess to love […]
A coyote urine mark I investigated with my nostrils in the snow was lemony and oceanic with an aftertaste of burning sulfur and fetid saltwater. A healthy piss from a black bear in the sand I’d call oak barrel stank. I got my nose as close as I dared into the stained hole from the […]
An unsung advantage of partnership is not having to be quite so on top of things all the time. Liberated from the relentless need to be competent, you can think more interesting thoughts. This post was originally written a few months into the pandemic, and my own thinking was so discombobulated I have very little […]
