Moccasins in Sandals Country

Navajo legends speak of angry mountains that must be calmed with tobacco offerings. It’s one of the most ancient examples of intergenerational trauma in a people who have experienced plenty more since. The memories of the angry mountain in question have been lost, but a cultural nervousness around the harmless ranges of Arizona and New […]

Size Matters

When you’re exceedingly tiny, you can live almost anywhere – in an eyelash follicle, between grains of sand, or on an insect’s wing. You can probably find food and plenty of it, whether you prefer dead skin cells, blood, sap, or rotting vegetation. You can also get away with almost anything, like the male, deep […]

Snapshot: Executive Function

I’m not sure that my problem is with executive function exactly; my problem might more accurately be described as “not wanting to do administrative tasks.” And, my goodness, when you’re a grown-up, there are a lot of administrative tasks. On the suggestion of a wise advisor, earlier this fall I asked my friend Erika if […]

Plunge

            I’m time-traveling back to early 2021, when finding pool lane reservations was as tricky as scoring Taylor Swift tickets. For the last few months, I’ve been happily swimming at a pool that I can go to almost any time and find an open lane. Swimming bliss! And then yesterday I found out it will […]

An Inordinate Fondness for Grasshoppers

Last month I went to Arizona on a reporting trip. One afternoon excursion took me to the eastern Patagonia Mountains, the rolling dun-colored range that aligns with one segment of the United States’ border with Mexico. I walked through oak-juniper woodlands alive with gray foxes and Coues deer, a small, desert-adapted subspecies of whitetail. Tufty […]