Lately I have been thinking about the opening stanza from a poem by Emily Dickinson: ​Hope is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,And never stops at all. . . Dickinson was right. “Hope is the thing with feathers”—for who hasn’t been stirred out of darkness by a bright pulse […]

Recently, I had a week of fieldwork that illustrates the highs, lows, and in-betweens that comprise most scientific projects. Research proceeds in fits and starts, whether we’re talking high-energy particle physics, molecular genetics, or (most critically) Inyo Mountains salamanders, as during my week of contrasts: Day 1—My goal was to investigate a possible salamander locality […]

Recently, my son and I discovered a “new” population of Inyo Mountains salamanders, perhaps the twenty-first documented locality. It was in an unexpected situation—a seep just eighty yards long, which we reached after a long walk up an otherwise waterless drainage. A thin trickle of water slipped through a rank growth of grass and goldenrod, […]

At most colleges and universities, as at Brockport, tenured faculty are eligible for a sabbatical every seven years. It’s a wonderful privilege, with few analogs for most working Americans.  For me, a sabbatical offers the time to put aside my normal duties—which run mostly to administration, teaching, service, and supervision of other people’s research—and immerse […]