Oklahoma Has Mountains! It’s always dangerous to assume stereotypes are true or, at the very least, absolute. The states in the Great Plains have earned reputations as flat, featureless bread baskets. In some ways, this standing is accurate. The majority of agriculture in the United States comes from this region. However, digging into the statistics […]
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The Mountain Is Coming and We Must Go For many who feel the call of the mountains, living amongst the Alps in Switzerland might be Edenic. If you lived in Blatten, one of four tiny villages in the Lötschental, a valley in the Bernese Alps, you could wake up every day to see these views
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Simona and the Forest of the White Tower We should finally acknowledge that Earth is not our property. We are only co-tenants of Earth and we could, in a way that would not be too costly for us, curb our appetites and let all those other creatures live. –Simona Kossack Before modern human civilization reshaped
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Mostly Clear vs. Partly Cloudy We love to hate on weatherpeople and their nebulous percentages. How can they get it so wrong? As it turns out, meteorologists are increasingly accurate. Graphic by Hannah Ritchie Even if we concede that the weather prognosticators have improved, perhaps some of their success comes from vague wording. For example,
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Hay Fever Many people cite spring and fall as their favorite seasons. The moderate temperatures and humidities allow us to enjoy the outdoors without freezing or heat exhaustion. For billions of people on Earth, however, these in-between seasons don’t arrive string-free. Spring and autumn can bring a punishing reaction to nature’s rhythms: seasonal allergies. Colloquially termed hay
The Blue Hole of Abisko We learned that blue holes are nexuses of past and present, a mixing of geological processes related to land and sea. These sinkholes produce stunning features, including the Great Blue Hole of Belize. But there’s another type of blue hole, too, one that brings skies into the party. In Sweden, the village of Abisko
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Blue Holes & Cenotes Typically, the matter beneath our feet is a matter of no concern. It’s literally rock solid, and we move about our lives without paying it much attention. Not all Earth is equal, though. Some soils make fantastic bedrock, while others are subject to dissolution and erosion. Sometimes, when chemical processes or
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Vinicunca, Rainbow Mountain About 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Cusco, among the Andes of Peru, sits a mountain revered in Incan mythology. Hispanicized as Ausangate, this gorgeous peak rises 20,945 feet (6,384 meters) above sea level. The Incas believed Ausengate was one of a dozen sacred Apu, a god or spirit in the form
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The Gorgonizing Lake “They thought I was absolutely insane—some crazy white guy, coming along offering money for people to basically go on a treasure hunt around the lake for dead birds.” –Nick Brandt In Greek mythology, the primeval sea-god Phorcys and the sea-monster Ceto had six daughters, three of whom were named Euryale, Stheno, and
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Devil Horn Sunrise After many North Americans were treated to a stunning total solar eclipse in 2024, the partial solar eclipse slated to transpire in spring 2025 might have seemed trivial in comparison. While nothing can approximate the experience of totality, this partial eclipse promised something more than the run-of-the-mill crescent. The 29 March event was visible
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