Mud Slinging

With sea levels expected to rise 3 to 6 feet by the end of the century, coastal communities are moving fast to construct major shoreline projects to protect themselves. As the size of these projects expands, the primary building materials — dirt and mud — are getting scarce.                                                                                 ~ Lauren Sommer Mud puddles, muddy […]

Spring

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happySunshine in my eyes can make me crySunshine on the water looks so lovelySunshine almost always makes me high                                                 ~ Sunshine, John Denver We sat on the patio in the sun, soaking up the warmth after a day or two of rain. It felt nice to be outside […]

Roof Deserts

My small town on the outer edge of the Denver metro area is beginning to experience a push for more housing — particularly for affordable housing. This is driving developers to construct dense multi-family apartments and condos on vacant lots and on clusters of what would have been single-family home lots. There is much concern […]

A Seedy Friend

I met Paul Kilburn at the turn-off into the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, decommissioned a few years before. Paul and his volunteers had permission to collect native seeds from the buffer zone around the facility that had been created to provide both a security barrier from outside intrusion and physical separation from what was […]

Climate Change

I’ve been everywhere, man.I’ve been everywhere, man.Crossed the deserts bare, man.I’ve breathed the mountain air, man.Of travel I’ve a-had my share, man.I’ve been everywhere.                                                                 ~ Johnny Cash I chatted recently with a friend about her days married to a park ranger and all the places she’d lived and the adventures they’d shared. It got […]

Is it Hot in Here?

I remember running out the back door across the hot cement patio to the safety of the cool grass of the lawn. Going barefoot in Texas most summers made me extremely conscious of the surface I walked on. We learned where the patches of goathead stickers were, where the gravel was scattered on the sidewalk […]

Anthropause

“As factories grew quiet and traffic dropped, ozone levels fell by 7 percent across the Northern Hemisphere. As air pollution across India dropped by a third, mountain snowpacks in the Indus Basin grew brighter. With less haze in the atmosphere, the sky let more sunlight through. The planet’s temperature temporarily jumped between a fifth and half of a degree.” […]