Thanks to some mysterious alchemy of genes, neurotransmitters, and environment, I’ve never been particularly susceptible to the lure of alcohol or drugs. Of course, I have my own temptations. I won’t mention the embarrassing ones, but I’ve sometimes been seduced by the complicated algorithms that spread their pernicious brain worms via social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

I place my left hand against the slab of grayish-black, water-polished rock. It is 3:46 PM Mountain Standard Time on March 20, 2025, and I’m somewhere deep in the Grand Canyon. The rock beneath my hand belongs to the Granite Gorge Metamorphic Suite, which sounds like the title of an orchestral piece by Ferde Grofé, rather than a series of geological strata roughly 1.75 billion years old, give or take a few million years.

I first came to Great Slave Lake in July of 1977, when I was twenty-five. There were eight of us traveling in a twenty-five-foot-long North canoe, which we’d brought 225 miles up the Mackenzie River from Fort Simpson, before paddling to Reliance, at the eastern end of Great Slave Lake. Our final days on the […]

On days when Eli is working, it’s my job to walk Darwin the Cat, although she helps when she can. Unless it’s raining or brutally hot, he’s eager for the outside world, much as I am—although he must suffer the indignity of a harness and (sometimes) leash, lest he vanish into the wilds of our […]

My son and (now) daughter-in-law got married recently, in the beautiful Bitterroot Valley of Montana. Martin and Bess’s celebration was lovely and joyous, but during the weekend—their weekend—I could never quite shake the terrible knowledge of what had happened one week earlier, when the horrific events in Israel and Gaza began to unfold. A mélange […]