‘Trees know about belonging.’
Essays
Posted inDecember 1, 2022: Beyond Illusion
What emerges at low tide
Queer history is all around us, even if it is obscured from sight.
Posted inDecember 1, 2022: Beyond Illusion
Making Christmas cake in Compton
Reviving a family tradition eases holiday grief.
Posted inNovember 1, 2022: The Futures of Conservation
Antidotes for ecological forgetfulness
Bear witness, make a record, pass it on.
Posted inOctober 1, 2022: Making Refuge
Recollecting life on the edge of the prairie
Portraits of queer life and landscape in rural Washington.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2022: Going Under
On the road, a taste of home
The Saini family’s Punjabi dhabas serve ‘good vibes only.’
Posted inSeptember 1, 2022: Going Under
The anxiety and satisfaction of race day
A writer traces the motivations that led her to run a half-marathon on the California coast.
Posted inArticles
SCOTUS has shown poor judgment before
Remembering Japanese internment on a journey to Heart Mountain as Roe falls.
Posted inJuly 1, 2022: Living with Rivers
Getting over not fitting in
Why I have a jackalope tattoo, and another of a covered wagon.
Posted inArticles
When I knew I had made it home
I drifted around the rural West and country for decades. Until I reached a small corner of Colorado.
Posted inArticles
Raquel Gutiérrez feels shades of desperate
The author of ‘Brown Neon’ on queer fatherhood and being broke down in the desert.
Posted inArticles
As we celebrate Juneteenth, a look at the true history of emancipation
A historian describes how Black people were kept unfree even after slavery ended.
Posted inJune 1, 2022: A Legacy of Weapons and War
Witness to the Cold War in the desert
Terry Tempest Williams on Emmet Gowin’s unflinching photos of the Nevada Test Site.
Posted inJune 1, 2022: A Legacy of Weapons and War
How to choose a pronoun
The land does not care what parts of you are male or female.
Posted inMay 1, 2022: New Ways of Seeing the West
What does it mean to live well on an overheating planet?
A walk through the Quinault rainforest leads to a cascade of questions.
Posted inArticles
On grieving trees
For years, a young writer saw the tell-tale signs of beetle kill. And then the infestation came for the pines at her own home.
Posted inMarch 1, 2022: The Cloning Conundrum
Hate speech on the Bitterroot
How a day on the river made me question my relationship to a place I call home.
Posted inMarch 1, 2022: The Cloning Conundrum
The place that coal built and fire burned
Extractive industry laid the infrastructure for the suburban sprawl that fueled Colorado’s destructive Marshall Fire.
Posted inMarch 1, 2022: The Cloning Conundrum
When the little owl vanishes
A writer reflects on parenthood and what to talk about when confronting extinction.