First must have come listeningto the wind or regardingthe movements of animals,then monitoring the starsand sometime after thatscrutinizing fire;but somewhere in there belongswatching the progress of a river… Billy Collins, “The List of Ancient Pastimes” Most of the last couple weeks I’ve been sleeping on the ground. I stayed in southern Utah canyons long enough […]
Miscellaneous
I have what might best be classified as ‘manic costume joy.’ You’ve even heard about it here on this blog. I try to be the scariest thing I can think of for Halloween. One year, that was “Your Biological Clock.” Another year, the year humans hit 7 billion in number on October 31st, I tried […]
When we first moved into this house, we planted a fig tree in the backyard. It looked sad and scraggly for a long time—years, in fact. I would go over to the houses of friends who had fig trees in August, and these trees would be dripping with figs. I would ask how old the […]
This post originally ran April 3, 2014. I’ve added a brief update at the end. Yellowstone National Park spans three states and nearly 3,500 square miles, making it one of the largest parks in the US. So when I read that Montana officials are searching for a home for 135 Yellowstone bison living on Ted Turner’s sprawling private […]
This post was first published on January 9, 2019 Last month, while on assignment in Cozumel for a story on sponges, I went diving on a beautiful reef. It was stunning – a world of color, dreamlike shapes, and life everywhere I looked. Normally, I would have just swam about, marveled at the pretty nature, […]
I’ve begun to wonder if, on one’s 50th birthday, a switch flips that loosens all that was tight and squeezes everything else in a vice grip. It seems that in the middle years basic gestures can cause lasting injuries. Bruises appear out of nowhere. My same-age friends and I compare aches and pains, and we […]
It’s October, which means that my local hardware store is offering a discount to shoppers who wear pink, Allegiant Airlines is selling pink drinks and police officers across the country are donning pink badges, all the name of “breast cancer awareness.” Also known as “pinkwashing,” these pink ribbon awareness campaigns allow people to feel like […]
QUESTIONER: I see you wrote a new book that just came out. It’s called Virga and Bone: Essays from Dry Places. Does anybody ever make fun of you for that title? AUTHOR: I don’t understand the question. Q: I mean, Viagra and Boner, you haven’t thought of that? What does virga mean? A: It’s when […]
