Landscape

The solace of deep time

In his 1981 book, Basin and Range, John McPhee gave us a good analogy for the scale of deep time. Stretch out your arm sideways, and imagine that the 4.55 billion-year timeline of earth’s history runs from the tip of your nose to the tip of your middle fingernail. A quick swipe of a nail file would wipe out human history. …

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Surprised by delight in Missouri

Two months before, I hadn’t even known there were prairies in Missouri. But there I was, in early August, swerving all over the place on a dirt and gravel road, on my way to one. I wasn’t swerving because the surface was slippery after the night’s rain, but because large, soot-black butterflies with luminous blue …

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The call of wild beauty

I lived for many years with a great deal of beauty outside my windows. I was looking at acre on acre of wetlands, salt marsh, patches of meadow, shrubs, and trees. Beyond that was the estuary the land bordered. Except for a few flowering shad trees in the spring, and a scattering of vivid autumn …

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The mysterious Yukon

If you want tundra, you must either go far enough north or high enough up. So a trip up the Dempster Highway in the Yukon was perfect for my longing for arctic plants. Two days of careful driving over the dirt and gravel road will take you into the Northwest Territories and to the Arctic …

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