I began my sabbatical year at 8:00 a.m. on September 9th, as I drove out of Brockport and pushed west toward a three-week stint as a writer-in-residence at Great Basin National Park. Fifty hours and 2,200 miles later, I arrived at the park—worn down by my insistent motion, but happy to be in the West. My […]

One of the great joys of my writer-in-residence “position” is the opportunity to explore some wonderful aspects of the Great Basin with National Park Service biologists. Last night was one those occasions, when I tagged along with a crew headed to a nearby cave to band bats. The cave is a well-known roost for migrating […]

Yesterday an early storm brought snow to the high country. In a day or so, as September temperatures warm, meltwater will percolate through the thin soil, and where the rocks are right it will slip into limestone fissures, carrying a hint of acidity deep underground. As it has done for millions of years, the water […]

I climbed Pyramid Peak on a day of broken clouds, bitter winds gusting hard out of the west, a few flakes of September snow in the air. On the summit I sought shelter behind a low rock wall, huddling in its lee and hoping for a respite from the wind, so that I could relax […]

In the late afternoon I drive out from Baker (population 68), cross U.S. Route 50, and take the long and lonely road running north towards Gandy, Utah, and the 12,000-foot-high Deep Creek Range. The gravel road tracks the eastern edge of the Moriah Range through the Snake Valley, on past an occasional ranch or ramshackle […]