This California author examines lost years and life in the mountains.
California
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Encouraging more ‘nerds of color’
A conversation with L.A. writer Jervey Tervalon.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
How my Californian father adapted to Utah
He found solace in growing fruit trees, but never quite made the Beehive state his home.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Masters of Dig: A tour of authorial abodes
Visiting the homes of my favorite writers
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
A dam difficult job
California’s drought through the eyes of a water manager.
Posted inArticles
Shaken and stirred in California’s recent earthquake
How seismic events can make drought impacts worse.
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Metamorphosis in Winnemucca
The Days Of Anna MadrigalArmistead Maupin288 pages, hardcover:$26.99. Harper Collins, 2014. California author Armistead Maupin has returned with the ninth and final volume in his much-loved Tales of the City series. Maupin, who has long refused to be pigeonholed as a “gay writer,” writes about contemporary San Francisco and the love lives of both gays […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
The prickly pear as California crop
Can an overlooked succulent help salvage toxic soils?
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
The Ansel Adams Wilderness
The Ansel Adams WildernessPeter Essick, foreward by Jamie Williams112 pages, hardcover:$22.95.National Geographic Society, 2014. For 25 years, Peter Essick traveled the globe as a National Geographic photographer, and recently he was named one of the world’s 40 most influential nature photographers. In 2010, Essick began “a potentially controversial” project in his native California: shooting in […]
Posted inGoat
Was the fatal thunderstorm in California a climate phenomenon?
The weather of Venice Beach, California, where I live, is for the most part stable, and almost always predictable. No sudden squalls appear out of the southwest to chase skateboarders off their concrete ramps; never do we hear the civil-defense sirens warning of an approaching tornado. Living here, swimming and surfing at the beach a […]
Posted inGoat
California gears up to fine water wasters: Should we turn our neighbors in?
Five years ago, when south-central Texas was suffering through its driest year in more than a century, public officials in the city of San Antonio turned in desperation to a new tactic to enforce water conservation: They dispatched the police. From April of 2009 and on through the rest of the year, off-duty officers and […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Reflecting on groundwater from the Owens Valley Watershed
Growing up in the high desert, I learned water doesn’t just fall from the sky.
Posted inGoat
Reasons for massive starfish dieoff still unknown
Here’s some shocking news: Since last fall, when I first wrote about Pacific sea stars falling victim to a mysterious disease, turning into goo and dying, the aptly-named “starfish wasting syndrome” has not – as scientists hoped – subsided on its own. It’s gotten much, much worse. How much worse, you ask? Well, from the […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
The Latest: After a long battle, agreement for the Klamath
BackstoryTo protect endangered fish during 2001’s drought, federal officials shut off irrigation water in Oregon and California’s Klamath Basin, costing agriculture millions. The next year, farmers got their water – along with a massive salmon die-off that infuriated Klamath tribes. Tribal members and farmers remained at odds until 2004, when federal rulings prompted dam-owner PacifiCorp […]
Posted inGoat
The suburbs didn’t die — just short-circuited
Wasn’t it just a few months ago that we were all celebrating the death of the suburbs? Both Millennials and Boomers, and perhaps many of those in between, were headed for the walkable, vibrant urban core. We would bulldoze no more desert for McMansions; sunflowers would invade exurban golf courses; and the expressways built to […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Peak water
Bigger reservoirs and deeper wells won’t end California’s water crisis
Posted inGoat
Against all odds, wolf OR7 may have found a mate
On May 3, a wolf slipped through the frame of a remote camera in southwestern Oregon, a blur of black and brown. The next day, under the cover of darkness, it stared directly at a camera, eyes aglow, and did something ordinary that, under the circumstances, was an extraordinary sight: It squatted and peed. This […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
A long-submerged town becomes visible
Water recedes under drought conditions and reveals a lost California community.
Posted inArticles
Will our ‘dam nation’ free its rivers?
A new film explores a growing movement to remove dams that have outlived their usefulness.
Posted inGoat
Joshua trees may be migrating north in response to climate change
Last spring, Joshua trees put on a magnificent show in the Mojave Desert. Nearly all at once nearly all of them bloomed, sprouting dense bouquets of waxy, creamy-green flowers from their Seussian tufts of spiky leaves. The bloom was so sweeping and abundant — and such a contrast to the typical pattern, where only a […]