Failure I’ve been thinking a lot recently about failure. At the end of June 2025, I intently followed two incredible forays in the mountains. The first was an attempt at a fastest known time on the mighty Appalachian Trail; the second was the annual Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile jaunt through the Sierra Nevada and, […]
The Violet Crown City of light, with thy violet crown, beloved of the poets, thou art the bulwark of Greece. –Pindar, Fragment 76 The drawing-rooms of one of the most magnificent private residences in Austin are ablaze of lights. Carriages line the streets in front, and from gate to doorway is spread a velvet carpet,
Indigo Buntings One of the most distinctive birds of the Americas is the indigo bunting. Named for its resemblance to an ancient dye, the bird can be brilliantly colored. A male indigo bunting – photo by Dan Pancamo Indigo is the black sheep of the ROYGBIV colors. Is it closer to blue or purple? Is it even a
Orangey Minerva Animal characters on television and film can be as memorable as the most iconic human personalities. Toto. Mr. Ed. Lassie. In 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, Toto was played by a female Cairn Terrier named Terry. For many of the television roles, multiple critters played the part. Six collies played Lassie, starting with Pal
The Red Queen Hypothesis Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. –Red Queen, Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass Undoubtedly, one of the greatest scientific revolutions transpired in the mid-1800s, as Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace advanced the theory of evolution. Borne time and again
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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