[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his week marks 30 years since I turned my pickup left onto a North Pole road and noticed the clutch pedal did not return to my foot. In a panic, I reached down with my mittened hand and pulled. The frozen plunger oozed back into position. Driving at minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit is not a […]
Why, a friend asked, are there so many birch seeds on top of the snowpack in Fairbanks? A day later, the answer hit me in the head. As I walked through the forest, I looked up just in time to get peppered with frozen specks from above. Redpolls, finches that fit in the palm of […]
Two-hundred and thirty-six years ago, when Gen. George Washington marched back into New York City as British troops were walking out, a volcano erupted in Iceland. For eight months of 1783, Laki volcano spewed lava and belched noxious fumes into the atmosphere. One-quarter of the residents of Iceland died, and the sulfur-rich gases that spread […]
While walking the streets of Washington, D.C., last month, a pleasant sound stopped me. A male robin was singing, high in a sidewalk sycamore. It was December, months away from when that bird would use the same voice to declare his breeding territory. I wondered why he practiced now, as I stood amid the urban […]