When a glacier retreats, it leaves behind a land scrubbed clean of life. On barren rocks and humped moraines of leftover rocky debris there is no soil — only a fresh slate upon which to build a new world. From the 1300s to the 1850s, Earth experienced a Little Ice Age. Glaciers advanced on terrain […]

One of my grandmother’s favorite expressions, unfailingly delivered with exuberant exaltation, was, “I will to live in a world that wills to live!” She would sing it out whenever she saw anything like a tree growing out of a rock. I think of her when I see the first buttercup of spring, reclaiming its territory […]

For most of my four decades as a traveler, I have been a cultural quester more than a wildlife wanderer. I’ve lived in Paris, Athens, Tokyo, and San Francisco, places where you’re much more likely to encounter a legion of latte-sippers than a leap of leopards. And when I’ve ventured farther afield, I’ve tended toward […]