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...