Field Notes (Science and Environment)

April 15th, 1832 On the second day of our anchorage at the mouth of the Rio Santa Cruz, I led a party of sailors up...

I never liked science. Numbers are boring. I never was this nerd guy, doing the math, imagining algorithms, checking things in a laboratory... I...

It races over the Bay of Bengal. It charges through river, paddy, and city. From Boston in my WhatsApp to family in Calcutta, I speak of Arfan. Perhaps...

How is anything radically new ever created in nature? Is it true, as some scientists say, that everything under the sun is just a...

  Image: "Black Hole Image Makes History" NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Photostream, licensed under CC 2.0.   Michael Leach: I was inspired to write the poem ‘Black...

on record. we’ve heard it before, the hottest ____ on record. just fill in the revolving blank. hail mary, full of grace ravenous wildfires. floods. look! here’s video, a camper van...

I remember the diapers—ripping open bag after bag of used diapers. It was 2014 and a friend and I had volunteered to help with...

"... you have to surrender to the essential wildness of the work.” - Julia Phillips When I surrender to the essential wildness of my yard, it’s...

A dandelion’s fruiting head a jeweled amphora. Spinach tissue’s blue mosaic, too beautiful to eat. Stomata dot the skin of trillium like points on a map, what’s laid bare by...

If asked, the fox might say that one of the problems in her world, and ours, is that humans have overtaken her species as...

For days at the tail end of the Obama administration, I haunted my neighborhood thrift store, casing the free pile and the clothing racks...

I squeezed past Maya and closed my office door behind her, shutting out the last rays of natural light. Under the cool fluorescents, she...