• 78 North

    78 North

    From the top of Platåberget, Longyearbyen looks small. In the late summer evening fog, a few lights are on, but the sun won’t “set” for at least a few more hours. The bare, greenish hills and mountains close in around the village, and we can hear the ships horns and a helicopter somewhere, but the

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  • Chasing the Night

    Chasing the Night

      Our long day of international travel began with Jim’s Russian friend and coworker, Dmitri, driving us to the airport. He assured us that a ten-hour flight was hardly anything, at least we weren’t flying to Russia! It was hard to keep that in mind as we squirmed in our seats 8 hours in.

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  • The Great American Eclipse

    The Great American Eclipse

    In the movie “The Dark Crystal,” there is an event that occurs every 999 years (“The Great Conjunction”) in which the three suns converge and create a powerful beam of light. The light tore a rift in the earth, revealing the Dark Crystal. It also allowed the creation of the evil Skekses and burned up one of

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  • Water, Water, Everywhere

    This week, Seattle has become a caricature of itself, and I a willing participant. I sit at my dining room table, squinting to see what I’m writing in a gloom that would rival Gollum’s cave. It’s 11 am and I refuse to have the lights on at such a time. It’s been pouring rain all

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  • Beezley Hills

    Beezley Hills

    I wrote (and photographed) this for the Washington chapter of the Nature Conservancy last year. This event is coming up again soon, and we need it more than ever. The proposed federal budget for 2018 cuts billions in funding for conservation, climate, and scientific study in general. This sort of program – generating bipartisan, urban-rural, hunter-conservationist engagement

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  • Enchanted

    Enchanted

    There is nothing that delights me like a dewy web against the damp green forest. Enchanted when its diminutive architects make the beads of glass dance in the pale winter sun – may they take comfort that in lieu of food, they have captured the stars in their nets.

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  • Ten years ago this fall, I – freshly graduated from high school – flew to Quito, Ecuador, to teach English at an orphanage. Ok, well, really, I was getting out of my hometown, making my mark, immersing myself in language and culture, learning something new about a corner of the world far, far away from my tiny

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  • Ten years ago this fall, I – freshly graduated from high school – flew to Quito, Ecuador, to teach English at an orphanage. Ok, well, really, I was getting out of my hometown, making my mark, immersing myself in language and culture, learning something new about a corner of the world far, far away from my tiny

    Read more →

  • A Taste of Ecuador

    A Taste of Ecuador

    Ten years ago this fall, I – freshly graduated from high school – flew to Quito, Ecuador, to teach English at an orphanage. Ok, well, really, I was getting out of my hometown, making my mark, immersing myself in language and culture, learning something new about a corner of the world far, far away from my tiny

    Read more →

  • Ten years ago this fall, I – freshly graduated from high school – flew to Quito, Ecuador, to teach English at an orphanage. Ok, well, really, I was getting out of my hometown, making my mark, immersing myself in language and culture, learning something new about a corner of the world far, far away from my tiny

    Read more →