In every issue of Orion Magazine, a literary journal that explores the connection between nature, culture and place, a writer pens a declaration in list form. It could be about anything. One was entitled 7 Survival Tips for the Hardy Extraterrestrial and another, 10 Words Technology Borrowed from Nature. It’s called an enumeration. Here is my …
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Semi-Permeable Self
I. New Yorkers are more vulnerable than they're willing to admit. On the surface they are hard, cultured, ambitious and imposing, but just under that surface they're soft, and like all of us, they long to connect. This was one of the first things I learned about my new city. When we got here last …
Skiing is Living
“I am in love with this world. I have nestled lovingly in it. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited …
Is it an Ice Mountain?
One morning last June I was in the middle of a bird survey near the terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs just inside Yellowstone Park when I heard a voice behind me say, “Excuse me.” I hoped she was talking to someone else, but she persisted. “Excuse me,” she said again more loudly. As I turned …
Naturalistic Metaphor
Cities, naturally, take great pride in their cultural institutions: art galleries, museums, and theatres whose cavernous halls contrast the compression and density of life outside their front doors. New York is no exception: there is something sylvan, something "natural" in the transition from bustling 5th Ave. into the more breathable expanse of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The courtyard in the gallery's American …
Writing the Wild 