Last weekend Elise and I spent three days backpacking in the vicinity of Pyramid Pass, a high notch in the stony spine of the Idaho Selkirks. With a couple of friends in tow (don’t worry: absolutely no hugging!), we crested the pass and descended to a teacup lake nested in a bowl of granite and […]
fishing
This past summer, an ecologist named Erik Beever sent me a new paper he’d published on a class of critters you might call charismatic invaders: introduced species that are at once ecologically disastrous and deeply beloved. Erik and his coauthors offered a few examples, some you’ve heard of — like wild horses — and some […]
A local restaurant reviewer has a monthly feature in which he lists openings and closings of eateries around town. The list only contains the restaurants’ names and addresses, which always seems especially stark when it comes to the places that have shut their doors. It’s the culinary equivalent of a gravestone. There’s nothing about the buckwheat crepe […]
The following is an essay I wrote while reporting from the Sea of Cortez last fall. To learn more, read my piece in this month’s Harper’s Magazine: “Emptying the World’s Aquarium.” Over the past few days I have found myself thinking a lot about the tragic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” In it, […]