What Could Go Wrong?

This post first appeared in 2016, but I started thinking about it today while I was watching “Young Woman and the Sea,” a Disney movie based on the book by Glenn Stout. In it, Trudy Ederle encounters a bloom of jellyfish while she’s swimming the English Channel–and the filmmakers manage to make the experience look […]

This Is the Coldest Summer of the Rest of Your Life

This post first ran on January 26, 2012. Since then, we’ve continued to set records for the hottest year on record.  My question began with a social media status update by my friend Paolo Bacigalupi. Paolo wrote: At what point does a “drought” become an “arid climate?” Paolo posed his question months ago, and at first glance, it seemed like […]

The New Greatest Story Ever Told

Hieronymous Bosch, the Temptation of St. Anthony. Via Wikimedia Commons. When I was a student studying literature, I kept seeing Christ allegories everywhere. I remember being assigned The Old Man and the Sea, one of many Hemingways I read that semester, and I remember my teacher asking what we thought the book was about. Answers […]

Hope for the Alarmed: An Interview with Madeline Ostrander

Madeline Ostrander is a passionate and talented science journalist and a good friend. Her must-read book At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth is on shelves now. KATE: What initially sparked this project for you? MADELINE: Like most people who’ve been writing about climate change for a long time, I’ve […]

Guest Post: Permanent Impermanence

Assateague The waves curl in and lave the shore, drop their cargo of shells and polished glass, then withdraw, clawing back the sand. Sanderlings scatter, poke and pick, flee incoming waves, chase them back out, reverse, repeat. I stand on spongy sand, solid enough if a bit shaky, sea foam washing my feet. Somewhere to […]

Poem: Parking Lot, Deception Pass

In 2019, some science writer friends and I took a trip to Whidbey Island, just north of Seattle. I spent the drive there bargaining with my chronic illness, calculating how much I’d be able to do, and how much I’d have to miss. My need to survive grated against my need to actually live, as it […]

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 […]

fire season

This year, for our anniversary, my husband and I went backpacking. As we left Seattle, the sky was a clear, bright blue, and all the mountains were out: you could see depth in the Olympic range, and Rainier looked stunning as usual, if a little snow-bare. The hike was blissfully shaded and generously graded, the […]