Nature, environment, and a little philosophy
I was surveying the bone-dry San Luis Rey riverbed recently, performing autopsies on crunchy, senescing weeds, when I had a revelation in sound. I heard a newborn bird learning to sing. First, from a nearby willow, drifted the adult Vireo’s song: a well-formed, two-part warble. Then came baby’s: a squeaky, unfinished attempt tapering into hesitating …
The San Diego River is full of trash. In an effort to keep it under control, the San Diego River Park Foundation organizes clean-ups two or three times each week. I lend a hand as often as I can. Most days, removing trash from the river means clearing abandoned homeless encampments. Some sites, representing whole communities, …
Continue reading "In San Diego, Rescuing our River After the Rain"
We traveled for a year. Then, in July 2017, Eric and I returned to my village in the French Alps, my "original place". The following is a journal entry that I recently unearthed, which I composed about a week after our return. It captures acute feelings of confusion and longing. Closing the chapter on traveling was …
On the US-Mexico border, learning to see environmental damage in one of the weirdest places in the world.
It’s a cool morning in February in north-western India and we’re being guided through a brand new nature reserve on the outskirts of Jodhpur, a city of around a million inhabitants in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan. Sandstone is the dominant feature in this landscape so everything is overwhelmingly orange, except for the reserve’s thriving …
Continue reading "In India’s Blue City, Miners are Environmentalists"
In Varanasi, learning how environmentalists must navigate corruption and religion if they ever hope to clean the great, spiritually-pure Ganga.
Stars, like salt. 