I was forty-six when I first saw the desert and I’ve never been the same since. The lush, green landscapes I had known all my life peeled away. What was left was spare in all ways. Few plants, few colors, nothing to impede light, air so hot it became a presence, a sky so blue […]
Born in the desert Read More »
This was a year measured, in part, by the interconnections of flowing water. At the beginning, in Reweaving a River, I described a trip to an area of the Klamath River in northern California that was due to have four dams removed. One of the connections is my own: two of the dams were built
Songlines 2024: interconnections Read More »
I had never been a fan of cactus. Prickly, tough-skinned, ungainly. Leaves so attenuated they’ve become sharp-tipped spines. Interesting shapes, perhaps. Fascinating as examples of environmental adaptation, thriving from western Canada to Patagonia. But nothing to love. Things have changed. When I first came to the southern California desert and hiked in the spare open
My first post on The Soul of the Earth was on March 30, 2015. That was the Monday before Easter and this past Monday I finished a heavenly week in the same place I was nine years ago: the Anza Borrego Desert. To celebrate this Easter, I thought I would send a bouquet of the
The way Earth tosses beauty about fascinates me. She doesn’t save splendor only for grand vistas and awe-inspiring mysteries. She spreads it at our feet the minute we leave the pavement we are so attached to. She invites us to pay deep attention, often to the smallest of treasures. She strews exquisite mariposa lilies in the unlikeliest of places.
A season of butterfly lilies Read More »
When I started my landscape design business in the 1980s, the staff at plant nurseries nicknamed me ‘the weed lady’. I kept asking for plants that most people were removing. As much as I could, I wanted to plant the grasses and wildflowers, trees and shrubs native to the glacial moraine known as Long Island,
Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we love. Terry Tempest Williams I treasure finding beauty everywhere I go. And having it find me. The chocolate lily above is my favorite picture of 2018. I love both the flower itself and the spray of gold light behind it. It also
Songlines 2018: beauty and action Read More »
To love plants is to be in awe of photosynthesis. Even when you know how it works, it’s still a miracle. And a crucial, we-wouldn’t-be-here-without-it miracle. Its ramifications are so vast that once it showed up, it dictated all the evolution that followed. It’s also complicated. There is, for example, a catalyzing enzyme involved called
Living light: the crucial miracle of photosynthesis Read More »
The lines showed up one morning, on a section of my walk where the sand, driven over by a tractor, is unusually soft and easily shows imprints of desert wildlife. Lizard tails, I thought. I checked carefully for signs of tiny lizard feet but didn’t see any indentations along the lines. About a mile on,
Mysteries at my feet Read More »
When you look at the mountain above, your reaction is likely to be colored by what is most important to you. Skiers may think of the thrill of the trip down, climbers of the trek up. Mining executives of the coal or metals to be found there. Road engineers of the challenge of finding a
Rights of Nature: a breakthrough in imagining Earth Read More »