I stood on the tarmac of Guadalajara International Airport, watching a bright orange sun sink behind hazy mountains. The smell of jet fuel and wildfire hung in the air, a strange cocktail of familiarity in my nose. Noa and I had just flown in from LA and were on our way to Puebla. We hadn’t…

On a narrow, arcing wooden bridge that crosses just below the confluence of a major tributary and the main stem, I stood and let the breeze ruffle my hair like a pine’s needles. The turquoise water below tumbled westward as it had for millennia, snaking through a valley guarded by craggy peaks and towering evergreens.…

There’s a piece of coal sitting on my desk in Seattle. An ancient, dark vestige of the world that has been ripped from its place deep under Carbon County. I remember picking it up in Lansford, on a dead end street by the quarry. It was sitting on the sidewalk, and as I leaned over,…

I stood on the flat roof of the small Westside house that I grew up in, looking out over a familiar Los Angeles neighborhood and beyond. Visible through Japanese Elms and palm trees, the Santa Monica Mountains cut against the clear blue sky in sharper tones of green than normal. Sheets of rain had fallen…

“You’d be surprised how much sunshine can do for you. Go ahead, try it. Take your shoes off, go in the back yard, stand in the grass and let the sun hit you for a few minutes. If you’re feeling bad for any reason, it’ll make you feel better.” “I’ll give that a try.” “I’m…

The pocket of my car’s passenger seat is reserved for a tattered road atlas from the late 90s (the first advertisement is for a Kodak Fun Saver disposable camera). Folded in half and deeply yellowed, the pages open to detailed maps of the United States, Canada and Mexico. I rarely use it for route finding these days,…

I stood thigh deep in a long, straight section of Washington’s Yakima River, fighting a medium sized rainbow trout that had risen to a Blue Wing Olive dry fly. It was early afternoon, and the river, which drains from the eastern slope of the Cascade Range and carves its way through arid basalt in the…