Lay of the Land
Owls Among the Meteors
I’m speeding down a dark Vermont road, hurtling through a star-studded October night on an urgent quest: to witness the banding of one of the world’s smallest owls, the northern saw-whet. Continue reading
Departments
Review
China Dream
Released to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, Ma Jian’s China Dream is a razor-sharp indictment and fully loaded analysis of China’s recent history and the future Continue reading
Review
Animalia
Grove Atlantic, 2019. $27, 384 pages. Many characters populate Del Amo’s arresting saga of the toll taken by incest, autism, Catholic shame, and war on four generations of pig farmers, but Continue reading
Review
The Salt Path
Penguin Books, 2019. $17, 270 pages. Since Exodus and certainly in Homer’s telling of The Odyssey, the epic journey, the leaving home in search of one’s self, has been a literary Continue reading
Lay of the Land
One but Not the Same
The sun was setting as my backpacking group and I headed back to our campsite from Cinder Cone in Lassen Volcanic National Park. We walked in silence, falling into a rhythm. Continue reading