Science

Living With Wolves

Working at a wolf sanctuary became part of my identity. Leaving the pack was harder than I expected.

Jan 03, 2023
Learning Bravery from a Pair of Mice

I had never met creatures more cowardly than those two mice, but, for some reason, they would never abandon each other.

Dec 15, 2022
On Mother Trees: What Old-Growth Trees Taught Me About Parenting

I was helpful, but unlike the giving tree, I was not entirely happy.

Nov 17, 2022
Trying to Devour My Climate Anxiety

Even though I’ve learned I can’t always consume everything, it doesn’t stop me from trying.

Aug 23, 2022
The Comfort of Time Loops in the Age of Climate Crisis

Unlike these stories, we don’t have decades of do-overs—especially on the West Coast, where the droughts are real and the big earthquake could shake things loose anytime.

Mar 07, 2022
Studying the Antlion Taught Me How to Be Human

As a behavioral ecologist, I was asking of the natural world the very questions I was too scared to ask of myself and those around me.

Feb 16, 2022
The Lightning Strike That Burned Through My Family

My mother’s body, one in a million, became a conduit for lightning, and, three months later, it became a conduit for me.

Feb 10, 2022
You Mean More to Me Than Any Scientific Truth

A poet wrestles with grief and the multiverse.

Oct 06, 2021
The Climate Crisis Is Changing the Taste of Wine

When the fires come, as they have for the past five years in California wine country, there is little winemakers can do.

Sep 09, 2021
The Climate of Gender

On climate change, transitioning, gender, and the vanishing sweetness of maple trees.

May 03, 2021
My Own Personal Contagion

My German cockroach infestation, almost too good a pandemic allegory, forced me to confront the question of how much I could bear from New York City.

Oct 26, 2020
Finding God in Science

The grounding I felt in organized religion was substantial: the loss, acutely painful. I found temporary relief in all the ways nature found me wherever I lived.

Apr 21, 2020
Finding Biodiversity (and Chocolate) in the Forests of Ecuador

As a person who spends a lot of her time reading, writing, and teaching about endangered creatures and environments, I craved something hopeful.

Apr 08, 2020
Gathering Visions of the End of the World

Everyone talks about sea levels and temperatures rising, but there's also the more tangible inevitability of the soil running out.

Mar 16, 2020
How Translating Annie Dillard Helps Me Attend to a Dying World

Dillard stalked a world just beginning its freefall into an unprecedented amount of change, and her response was to look, and to look hard.

Jan 30, 2020
When It Comes to Climate Change, Grief Is More Useful Than Empty Nostalgia

We are already living in a changed world. Giving yourself time and space to grieve is important. But grief can also be a powerful tool for motivation.

Aug 27, 2019
Exploring a Rocky Mountain Glacier in the Space Between Science and Storytelling

Kate Harris writes in Lands of Lost Borders, “Explorers might be extinct, in the historic sense of the vocation, but exploring still exists, will always exist: in the basic longing to learn what in the universe we are doing here.” This is exactly how I felt working at Hilda Glacier.

May 30, 2019
Less Than 1% of Military Divers are Women—I Was One of Them

Contrary to its reputation as an extreme sport, freediving has meditative aspects.

Apr 12, 2019
Encountering Beauty and the Effects of Climate Change in Acadia National Park

As a child growing up in a landlocked state, I’d imagined the flock of gulls as a cloud of wings, calls sounding like laughter. Now I was struggling to grasp all that we’d lost.

Nov 06, 2018
On Political Change, Climate Change, and the Choice to Not Have Children

My partner and I were trying to have a baby despite our climate fears. Then Trump was elected.

Jun 05, 2017