“Here, take a look,” whispered Ricardo. Peeking through the lens, I was six years old again. There was the bird I had been yearning to see, a quetzal as resplendent as I had read about—a vivid dream from my distant past. He sat on a tree branch, preening his feathers, cocking his head and looking […]

When a glacier retreats, it leaves behind a land scrubbed clean of life. On barren rocks and humped moraines of leftover rocky debris there is no soil — only a fresh slate upon which to build a new world. From the 1300s to the 1850s, Earth experienced a Little Ice Age. Glaciers advanced on terrain […]

One of my grandmother’s favorite expressions, unfailingly delivered with exuberant exaltation, was, “I will to live in a world that wills to live!” She would sing it out whenever she saw anything like a tree growing out of a rock. I think of her when I see the first buttercup of spring, reclaiming its territory […]