Penspective: Looking up

This post ran a few springs ago, in appreciation and imitation of Craig’s ‘penspective’ series, but with less effective photography. Spring seems like a wonderful time for cloud-spotting here. Last week, there was an amazing lenticular cloud in the shape of a cigar. I didn’t have my pen with me, but I can still remember […]

OH NO!! Dust On Snow!

I live in Western Colorado, where we’ve had an absolutely EPIC winter. At the Skyway cross-country ski trailhead on the Grand Mesa, we’ve measured more than 450 inches of snow this winter, compared to our seasonal average of about 290 inches. Our 10 foot high snow measuring stake was buried this winter — that’s how […]

Baltimore in August

I have nothing good to say about Baltimore in August. Ok, the farmers’ market is moving into high season, peaches & tomatoes, also okra — that’s good. Digression: I spent childhood on a small farm in the midwest making internal proclamations and declarations about freezing beans and canning applesauce in a hot kitchen, like, if […]

Why I’m Smiling in a Megadrought

We had a doozy of a snowfall last week in southwest Colorado, the high desert blanketed a foot and a half deep, the mountains getting a good four feet. Knock on wood, I don’t like to tempt the fates of nature and climate change, and I’m not meaning to brag, I just want to celebrate […]

Powder Days

This week, I was reading a story from a few years ago about what the last snow on earth might look like. Snow algae, which occur naturally in the snowpack, rise to the surface during the spring; when they emerge, they turn red. This  “watermelon snow,” these days, could be seen as a warning. The […]

Waiting for a plane

fog \’fog, fäg\ n : vapor condensed to fine particles of water suspended in the lower atmosphere that differs from cloud only in being near the ground ; a state of bewilderment ; something that confuses or obscures suspend \ sə-‘spend \ vb 1 : to keep fixed or lost (as in wonder or contemplation) […]

And yet still grow

The smoke startedwhile I was in the air.I first saw it,after my plane landed,as a video on my phone—a gold and gray billowjust two miles into the mountainsfrom the green propertywhere we lived.“Oh good, you’re home.You can help protect the housefrom the new wildfire,”my landlord texted, joking,but only half.

June Gloom

Ok so we missed this by a month, we’re sorry but what is time anyway. Maybe in this flat hot relentless July, we could use a little June Gloom! (Or as reader Michael McKee has heard it called in the Pacific Northwest, Juneuary.) The gloom can be pretty glorious, making the beginning of summer one […]