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 […]

Thanks for All the Snow

I took a train with my high school kid to Salt Lake City for a little urban immersion on Winter Break. We disembarked at 2:30 in the morning in a city experiencing what some said was the biggest blizzard they’d seen in a decade. That early morning, with packs on our backs, we walked into […]

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: Poet yells at newspaper article

In late October, The New York Times published a splashy feature article by opinion writer Bret Stephens titled “Yes, Greenland’s ice is melting, but…”. In this 6,000-word piece inspired by a trip to Greenland, Stephens shares his story of conversion from climate denial to climate concern. At least, purportedly. The piece has been widely criticized […]

Fig of my Imagination

It’s fig season again! But this year, it’s a little lackluster. It’s not the birds getting to the figs. It’s not the squirrels. There are only a few figs, and the ones that have appeared seem tired. Some of them are falling to the ground before they start to ripen, others are sitting small and […]

She Speaks for Protection

My mom used to work for the Environmental Protection Agency. She rode the bus downtown every workday from where she lived in the mountains outside of Denver. A golden-hearted woman, she believes in the EPA’s mission, which is protection. She saw her agency’s job as preventing the water we drink and the air we breathe […]

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 […]

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 […]