Our Earth
for the love of lowly things (for mary)
I knew Mary Oliver's work well enough to mourn her, to recall the way some poems snag you with their fishhook beauty and won’t let you go until you have reckoned with them. Perhaps most of all, the sacred imperative to give your whole self to a place and time—the endless and proper work of paying attention.
greening our golden hour grief: how not to be afraid of the end of the world
When I’m feeling optimistic, I wonder what kind of future world we’ll live in, how children could sit around imagining the monsters of eras past and whisper climate change between cupped hands. When I’m feeling pessimistic, I don’t like to wonder about the future.
Autumn Rush
As September waltzes into October, nature extends an invitation for all to come outside and join in its pleasant song. And once you begin to notice its melody, fall takes its time to rise to a crescendo.
Uncertainty
I hear in the forecasters' voices how they hate, respect, how they cannot help but admire such a powerful, mesmerizing creature. I admire her, too. I'm not a good evacuee.
Birdsong
I wonder how many other layers of reality I’m ignoring. How thin is the little layer of my attention? What are the trees saying? What is the sky saying?....birds seem to be calling me out of the human-words echo chamber entirely.
Mystery and Familiarity in Arches National Park
While entering Arches National Park, it is near impossible to stand beneath these natural rock formations and still be worried by the generalities of life. Life, as you have known it, is suddenly on pause. Your life transitions into snapshots as you wander the land in awe, feigning focus on putting one foot in front of the other while your eyes are bound to the monoliths that breach the sky.
The First of April
This is the season of excess: of mud and vast fields, of chattering birds clinging to trees like black leaves. In a few weeks frogs will sing so loudly you will hear them two miles away. Weeds and flowers and grasses will bolt upward, charged by the lengthening light.
Seeds of Tomorrow
The earth, the whole of it, is our garden. Our cross-thatched Eden, a checkerboard of beauty and clutter and devastation. The fertile fields we work and play upon—and litter with our stash of trash and ravish with our wars. Our squash and our squashing.
Researchers Find the Birth of Civilization in a Nutshell
In Orion, ionized clouds larger than cities and planets billow into space. Stars swarm and explode in a glorious million-year dance. The scientists and reporters say all of life’s ingredients are there. Before I knew of science, my eyes taught me the ways of the cosmos. I could look up at the night and feel at home.
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
At the moment, the assumption to question is that we humans have a right to be on earth and that it will indefinitely support us. When the very ground is taken from beneath our feet, where can we stand? What is left to us, when the familiar forms of our physical existence are taken away? Nothing, perhaps—yet I wonder.
On Having a Baby in the Age of Climate Change
I've had climate change anxiety since college, but bringing a baby into the universe intensifies it. My anxiety no longer only extends the length of my lifespan. I tell my husband Taylor I regret having a child because I can't stand the thought of Jackson in pain. He holds up our son’s wiggly, plump body. "You really wish he didn't exist?"
Given
...truth be told, this field offers nothing worth my time, has no economic value, is not going to end anyone’s suffering, is not going to bring down a tyrant, and I would be better off focusing on the efficiency of my day, the tasks, that which I can control in this little world of mine...
On Finding the Birds
Beyond my grandma’s living room, I talked to the birds, often to birds unseen. Some calls were easier to imitate than others. The bobwhite sang back most consistently, once I finally managed a passable whistle and could parrot its low opening note that quickly slides upward. In hayfields and from meadowed hills, I called out—the low bob, the high white—and it called back.
At Risk
I start over, trying different tricks, until I can prop each bloom in a semi-erect position. How ridiculous. I know it will be useless. I am perfectly conscious of setting up a sad masquerade. What is this pathetic comedy for? My own sake, I guess. These sunflowers are in agony, maybe already dead, but I have to pretend I’m doing the impossible to rescue them. I’m doing it, no matter the cost.
Urban Storm
The radar confirms what I sense. An amorphous green mass, outlined with yellow and red, tilts from the well of Texas to the roof of Michigan. I wait for it—the sky like a pressure cooker, eager and dangerous with its current of heat and force.
Discovering Wilderness in the City
I make it a point on this walk to find nature, identify and tag it silently, like an urban anthropologist. It feels like progress. It feels, perhaps, like a down payment on the benefits I’d get from a day in the woods, a week in the mountains, or a night beside the ocean. It’s not the woods, but maybe it’s close enough, I think.
The Physicality of Things
I’ve spent much of my adulthood astonished by what I was supposed to learn in school but didn’t or forgot. The earth’s mantle, stardust and the miraculous heart, which pumps two thousand gallons of blood every day. Did God make me forgetful of the body and the earth or is forgetting my sin, a feature of the fall?
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