Don't Save Anything

Hi friends, Today: springtime, caribou, and hidden cameras. What follows is from an essay I wrote earlier this week for Last Word on Nothing, a wonderful science blog that I encourage you all to check out. I’m reposting because it’s timely, and the videos are worth watching—they’re an invitation to slow down, and turn toward the more-than-human world.

Hi everyone, It’s been a while, and I’ve been busy with on some very interesting projects at Nat Geo and elsewhere. I hope to share more here soon. Scroll down past the conclusion of this essay for a selection of reading and listening recs, and for some (belated) book news.

Hi, everyone. Today’s story is about an obscure border dispute in the High Arctic. It’s also about colonization, ownership & the silliness of modern land claims. Scroll past the end for news and events related to my book, Frostlines, and for a selection of recommended reading and listening.

A painting of Jesus riding a caribou on the wall of the Chapel in the Mountains, in Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska. Friends, Jesus would not have invaded Venezuela. Or any other country. Hey friends, I was planning to drop in this morning to wish you a Happy New Year, and to let you know that I’ll be back to writing here next week, with a story about wolves and the turbulence that comes after visiting them.

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The very first story I ever published in National Geographic magazine ran at the “back of the book,” in a short-lived section called ZipUSA, or something like that—this was almost 20 years ago, so please forgive the blur.

Hi everyone, This morning a brief portrait of a man named Kristian, who I met a few years ago in southern Greenland. Now that my book is finished I’m (mostly) enjoying going back through old notebooks and photo files, revisiting stories that didn’t make it into the final draft of Frostlines. Kristian is one of them, a man I wanted to include but could find no graceful way for. I think I’ll make a series out of such stories, posting them here as a kind of supplement to the text, like footnotes.

Hi everyone, A brief letter and some photos today from a recent journey to Upernavik, in northwestern Greenland. I visited in September, working on a forthcoming National Geographic story, and some of these images—in words and pictures—keep running through my mind. Maybe it’s because it’s finally gotten cold here in New York City—cold enough, anyway, that my sons complain. I like to write these dispatches as poetry first, then mash the lines together into a paragraph.

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Hey everyone, This week I’ve been busy trying to finish a Nat Geo story that may be my last. That sounds dramatic, though I really don’t mean it to be. Things end. Maybe I’ll have feelings about it later, and maybe I’m wrong. For now, I’m trying to choose between two leads—if you’ve been here a while you know this is what I do: a little unnecessary suffering to make things more … fun?