Bookmarks (52)

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Snapshot: Farewell, Stump Mountain

    Last month I wrote about maps and dog walks and grief and stuff, and I illustrated...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Snapshot: The Penguins at Twilight

    For the past month or so I have been in Argentina at Punta Tombo, a large...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | What Happens in the Wild

    I’ve been setting up wildlife cameras at natural pinch points and along trackways to see what’s...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | The Canadian Canoe Museum

    My father and I spent many of my childhood summers canoeing Ontario’s lake systems, counting moose...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | What Could Go Wrong?

    This post first appeared in 2016, but I started thinking about it today while I was...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | A Brief Tribute to Karsten Heuer

    One October morning in 2013, I walked into the Canmore offices of an organization called the...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Conversation: Richard & the Pillars of Creation

    ANN:  Richard Panek has just published a book called The Pillars of Creation.  It’s about the...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | In the Pocket

    We (me, Pete, the baby) have had a wicked mystery cold going for 10 days and...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | A Leaf on the Wind: On Election Terror and Golden Trees

    The maple tree across the street is shivering. Just this morning, she’d stopped my breath with...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Cross-Country Skiing: A Halloween Tradition on Grand Mesa

    Today (October 29), I went skiing for the first time this season. Yesterday I drove up...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Wish Ewe Were Here

    Helen: Well, Cameron! Hello! Here we are again! I’m so glad we’re back two years after...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | What the Kids Are Doing

    The kids aren’t doing this any more. I miss it. I still have random people asking...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Released

    She was in the narrow shed, on a high shelf, in a cardboard box advertising Dole...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Synchronicity

    I believe.  I don’t know in what exactly, but something is happening out there, gears and...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Voice Mails from the Great Beyond

    On the morning my friend Kristina died, I listened and re-listened to the last voice mail...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Once Upon a Phylogeny

    This post first appeared in 2013. My dancing shoes no longer have heels, but at least...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Snapshot – Er, SnapVideo: Post-Spawn

    On a salmon walk last week, a friend and I encountered this battered, spawned-out chinook in...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | The Evidence of the Senses

    Bear with me on this, please and thank you, I’m trying to think something through. Amy...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Look up

    On May 10, I leave my house in northern Washington state just after dawn. I drive...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Infantile Amnesia

    This summer, my parents pulled out an ancient family VHS tape and we all gathered around...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | I Did It Dad! I LOVE This!

    I’d been pondering the consequences of modern self-chronicling when Facebook sent me its rendering of my...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Redrawing the map

    When I was in 8th grade – I think it was 8th grade – we had...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Out of time

    Call no man happy until he is dead. The phrase is a bit like an optical...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | My Brilliant (ADHD) Friend

    My dear friend “P” is a bit of a nut. She’s always doing a million things...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Something I Ate This Week

    Here’s a picture of something I found and put in my mouth. You get to guess...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Spirit of Rage and Madness

    It was a warm July evening, and we left the living room window open so the...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Weather the Weather

    Yesterday afternoon, all at once, my son and I started to feel a little sluggish. For...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Mustelid Madness

    A couple of weeks ago, during a backpacking trip in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, Elise and...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Beth Willman Really Does Have a Galaxy

    Since this was first published in August 17, 2012, Beth Willman’s galaxy has probably been identified...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Guest Post: Where Do Cicadas Go When They Die?

    The cicadas started scaling dense soil while I was in another state, hundreds of miles away...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Snapshot: Shiny (Non-Alive) Fish

    Sunday morning. Early for a Sunday morning, which is to say not that early. Maybe 8...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Animal/ Vegetable/ Ecosystem/ Nuisance/ Pet

    The round things in this picture of clear water aren’t rocks. They are little balls of...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Is It Grief? It Feels Like Grief.

    My dad died last year at age 94, his death a blessing for him and, while...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Stars are Born

    Last week, I crabbed over papers at a late-night kitchen table while my very pregnant step...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | The Makapansgat Cobble

    In 1925, teacher Wilfred Eitzman found a cobble—a rock slightly bigger than a pebble, the weight...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Green

    Last week I went sailing for the first time since I was a kid. It was...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | I STILL Wish I Could Have One

    OMG this saw whet owl. But it belongs in the forest, so I will leave it there....

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Baltimore in August

    I continue to have nothing good to say about Baltimore in August. In fact, if anything...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Voice Mails From the Great Beyond

    This post first ran in 2021, but I’ve been thinking of it a lot lately —...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Snapshot: My Pothos, My Muse

    Early in the pandemic, in the spring of 2020, a neighbor was moving out in a...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | What’s in a (gene) name

    Last autumn, Microsoft made a subtle change to its Excel spreadsheets, one which flew under the...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | SNAPSHOT: This Horseshoe Crab

    I was in Assateague, Virginia, some weeks back, doing the summer beach thing. The wild horses,...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Where We First Blew Up the Bomb

    This week is the 79th anniversary of two nuclear weapons used on a human populace. In...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | What to expect when you’re transforming

    I’m not on TikTok, so I had to be told about pregnancy nose. Whereas in the...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Small

    This week, a mourning dove has started to build a nest in the walnut tree outside...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Oh God, Another Meaningless List

    Recently, and to much engagement-baiting fanfare, the New York Times published its list of the best...

  • The Last Word On Nothing | Spotted Lanternfly Epiphany

    Y’all know about spotted lanternflies, right? I don’t have to explain them? (invaders, hordes over-running the...