It has been brought to my attention that I know very little about tornadoes. There are only two things that I know about them, in fact. They are a corkscrew of wind, and they helped Dorothy get to Oz. But do they start from the bottom or from the top? Can they travel over a […]
Weather
Each June, I revisit a post about June Gloom, a weather phenomenon that turns much anticipated summer sunshine into foggy despair. You thought you were safe this year, but no! Our gloom was so deep it started in May and lasted all day, every day. Now it’s July, and there is light at the end […]
I began my undergraduate studies in 1995. I completed them in 1999 and moved into a shared apartment overlooking the San Francisco Bay surrounded by a mix of native plants and xeriscaping. Since then, I have lived in South Africa, Santa Cruz, Mexico City, DC, and even spent a year on the road. Never in […]
You know it’s bad when you have to dig a hole and crawl in to survive. That’s what is going on in a creek bed at the bottom of the canyon below where I live. The creek stopped running a little more than a week ago. I walked down the other day and lifted […]
I am so angry, so sad. Today I drove my two children to the first day of a weeklong day-camp with a nature theme. They are learning about local species, pressing flowers, that kind of thing. The teachers expected that the kids would spend most of the day outside in nature. Instead, the kids will […]
When I turned on my phone over the weekend after a blissful week without cell service, I got an increasingly alarming series of messages from friends at home. A fire broke out near where I’m dogsitting If I get evacuated can I bring the dogs I am going to text your mom I’m evacuating my […]
I’ve been a bit of a Facebook addict for years. The pictures of pets! The interesting articles! But, when stressful things are happening in the world, I find that Facebook mostly exists for me to soak up everyone else’s panic about current events, like a human anxiety sponge. During a particularly stressful week last month, […]
We’ve been living in a tinderbox, precipitation at an all-time low, summer temperatures unusually high, snowpack paltry. The ground feels as if it’ll ignite just from looking at it. A few days ago a blaze started near Basalt, Colorado, a couple rivers east of where I live, forcing rapid evacuations. It started from tracer bullets […]
