Walking composition “The private property society is . . . a bizarre mutation alien to most of humanity.” —Andro Linklater, Owning the Earth A story came across my feed yesterday regarding a court case in… Read more

A little over a year ago, early in our state’s lockdown, I watched one of my children crumble into a million pieces. She’d held up okay until then. We’d done a lot of family walks,… Read more

Walking composition “The law is to protect property, and it thinks too much of property.” —Shadows on the Rock, Willa Cather I just read All Systems Red, the first in Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries series.… Read more

Walking composition “J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,No. I believe in this connection we all haveto nature, to each other, to the universe.And she said, Yeah, God.”—Ada Limón, from “What It… Read more

Walking composition “I want to be where all the ground is friendly.” —My Ántonia, Willa Cather I went up to a Forest Service cabin last week, by myself, just me and a pile of books… Read more

Before the country’s Revolution and subsequent decades under communism, Russian intellectuals were known for heading off into the countryside and monasteries in search of the “pure Russian soul”—a thing that they believed existed, and they… Read more

Walking composition “Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.” —Fyodr Dostoevsky I stepped outside this morning, early, to find the beginnings of a new snowfall dissolving into mist and the… Read more

Walking composition “The premise of Earth asking something of me—of me!—makes my heart swell.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Returning the Gift” Friends sometimes ask me how long I’ll stick it out in Montana. It’s natural, I… Read more

Another podcast episode queued up, maybe this time on existential risks with Thomas Moynihan of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute; or a webinar with Elizabeth Kolbert about her new book on saving ourselves through… Read more

Walking composition Zombie baby? Virus godling? Zoom in on that photo above and tell me that that angry infant in a surgical mask is not one of the scarier things you’ve seen. In last week’s… Read more