Nature, environment, and a little philosophy
I make a living restoring ecosystems. Here's what that's like. California has a thriving ecosystem restoration industry. People here care about their environment. That has allowed governments to strengthen environmental regulation, incorporate nature into planning, and fund restoration projects. In San Diego, I'm a project manager at a firm providing ecosystem restoration as a service. …
Continue reading "In California, repairing nature is an industry."
Last winter, after eight rainless years, California's drought finally ended. In San Diego, it rained what felt like every week, for several months. The hills flushed green then orange with poppies, the desert bloomed, the reservoirs refilled, the rivers flowed. We learnt that there were waterfalls in the mountains. In early March, in an extraordinary …
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 …
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. 