Midnight in a Sleepy City: The comic wildlife guide

My friend Kate and I use U2 concerts as an excuse to travel and see new cities. But earlier this summer the band had scheduled a couple of nights here in Washington, D.C., so we decided to spend the days before the first concert taking part in the fan-run general admission line. Fans show up […]

To My Companion Who Has Faithfully Returned

Curve of silver, Scythe becoming, Calends pass as you appear Bowing toward Venus. The evening star gleams just beyond your embrace, And you curtsy to it, reaching Like a dancer, arms outstretched and back bent, arching While Jupiter, behind, tries to catch you And in a few nights, will succeed.   Twilight sky full of […]

In the “Synthetic Age,” can technology save nature?

Christopher Preston is a philosopher at the University of Montana, but he’s originally from England. Moving to the American West changed him. “First I was in Colorado and then Alaska and Oregon. Here I was having encounters with spectacular charismatic animals and elemental processes like glaciers grinding through valleys.” His first week in the states […]

Feral daffodils

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud  by William Wordsworth   I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.   Continuous as the stars that […]

Looking Up

About seven years ago, a good friend of mine experienced an unthinkable tragedy. Her 38-year-old cousin—to whom she was extremely close—and the woman’s two young daughters were walking hand in hand to school when a driver, having passed out due to an illness, swerved into them. They were dragged to their deaths. Ever since, my friend […]

The Great Eucalyptus Debate

The Tasmanian blue gum, Eucalyptus globulus, is a magnificent tree. That is perhaps the only thing that everyone agrees on. It is, as Jake Sigg puts it, “a big, grand, old tree.” Tall, gnarled, stripey-barked, with white flowers like sea anemones, blue gum eucalyptus are characteristic of the San Francisco Bay area, despite being native […]

Guest Post: On Walden Pond, On Election Day

  After casting my ballot on Election Day, I took my two young daughters and my father, who was visiting from Wisconsin, to Walden Pond. It was a sunny fall day, unseasonably warm for November in Massachusetts. We splashed and played and collected stones, and as I watched my girls run free on the sand, […]