Next in the penspective series is something I recently ate. First, is it organic or manufactured? Don’t scroll down to see the pen for scale. Let your imagination wander. It looks marine to me, like an anemone bed, little feelers reaching up. Or the bristles of a scrubbing device made of plastic, which I can’t […]
Earth
Over the last week I traveled from town to town in southwest Colorado giving stage performances at night, telling stories about being here at the height of summer, tales of drought and wildfires and raging thunderstorms. The moon and stars passed over our open-air venues. I gave the show some science and some mysticism, in […]
They were dark forms scattered up and down the beach. One here, three there, a pair just beyond them. Their larger size distinguished them from the other shorebirds, drawing our attention. “What are they?” my dad asked. “Whimbrels,” I said. We were at Fort Stevens, a few miles outside of Astoria, Oregon, my hometown. My […]
First snowmelt, and a month of dry, but the rain finally comes, and everything is flowers, for a time.
Part of a series of ‘penspective’ posts using a pen for scale The earth is a producer of oddities. Crystals curl around each other like fiber optics and groundwater stains rock like Van Gogh. Geologic byproducts come out faster than Linnaeus could name off species, lava bombs, pseudomorphs, barites that look like roses, and copper […]
This post began with a question from my dear friend, the novelist and documentary filmmaker George Lerner. Looking over two years of footage from South Texas, I noticed something striking: I have lots and lots of glorious images filmed around sunset, but scant few decent shots at sunrise. Why is this, I wondered — is […]
High above the place where you’re reading this, maybe many miles away or, if you’re lucky, just outside your door, there is a strange and dangerous realm. Few dare to venture there, and many who do are unprepared for what they’ll encounter. Even fewer live in this harsh realm, especially all the time. It is […]
Given the choice, I wouldn’t be a bear, though it’s tempting to skip this dark season and live off my fat. Far below the metabolic plane of sleep, my body would be as cold as death to the touch. Parts of the brain that dart about in REM sleep are turned off, brain functions reduced […]