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Places Field Notebook Places Subscribe February 25, 2021 The Shape of a Horse My mother is an artist, and when she was a kid in New Mexico she'd draw horses in a Southwestern style, jaunty spring in their step and delicately curved... December 24, 2020 On these long and softly lit nights You go out for wood and find yourself staring at the stars, the sky so cold it feels like it could crack, and you remember what time of year it is. A far arm of the galaxy is laced from horizon to horizon. Orion chases the beautiful Pleiades nonstop. You November 26, 2019 Interview with the Author I see you wrote a new book that just came out. Its called Virga and Bone: Essays from Dry Places. Does anybody ever make fun of you for that title? (Read more...) March 28, 2018 Dig at Homolovi East of Winslow, a tarp tied at six points pumps like an enormous drum. Wind does not stop, not even to breathe, hot Arizona dust-blower from the north, the land of the dead. A crew fifteen feet down in the pit... March 03, 2018 Another Day on Red Mountain Pass One spring night years ago, more than 60 avalanches crossed a 5-mile stretch of this highway. The town of Ouray was buried in a sudden 4 feet of snowfall. I was working at the weekly paper in Ouray at the time... August 24, 2017 Why Am I Not There? I've heard totality is a mystical experience, once in a lifetime. Your inner picture of the earth, possibly the entire cosmos can change. Ive driven eight hours for far less.... November 15, 2016 Animals in Their Seasons Autumn rut is well underway. I am listening for bugling elk, their haunting, whale-like calls rising through dusk of bare aspens and sea-green conifers... December 22, 2014 The Ghost of Mr. Cocker Up until his death yesterday, Joe Cocker, lived in my neighborhood, which consists of a handful of residences up against the West Elk Mountains in western Colorado... May 28, 2014 I, Pothunter Ancient and enchanting, it is not something that belongs to us. It belongs, rather, to the land itself, its centuries of residence not something we should disturb... January 25, 2014 The Buying & Selling of Nature It is an eruption of mostly petroleum-based products designed to get you outside and keep you from dying there... January 20, 2014 Knowing Where You Are... Even if you cross continents and oceans for a living, your sense of place is probably tied to a well-defined location. You know the animal trails and trash cans, the culverts and waterways. You have a sense of home... January 16, 2014 Questions We Should Be Asking I believe the earth will survive us. It has survived far worse... March 07, 2013 The Unknown Grizzly Lifting the skull from its packaging, I expected to see a neat-dime-sized hole, a clean kill straight to the brain... February 27, 2013 What the Raven Dropped With flagrant, corvid panache, the raven with the twig transferred it from beak to talons... February 25, 2013 Waking the Bear It was a black bear. One suddenly woken from hibernation.... December 30, 2012 Black Bear on the Yukon Have you ever thought about being eaten alive? In the part of your mind that is still animal, still wild, you remember fight or flight; the fear of paws finally pinning you down, and the hinge of jaws upon you... November 03, 2012 My New York Times Op-Ed on Hurricane Sandy We get it: this storm and its impacts are huge. What we may not be getting is why.... September 25, 2012 My Apocalyptic Planet blog for Powell's Books Water was entirely gone from this place. The ancient bedrock tinajas that held rainwater in the surrounding volcanoes were empty. Life here was over... September 22, 2012 Above the East Fork of the Gila a Few Days Ago We'd been seeing old sign, big scat where you'd imagine some large brown black bear rambling, shambling, pawing up and down the canyon breaking branches... September 06, 2012 The Compass in the Middle of the World Orion is beginning show. The clock is turning, autumn on the approach... September 05, 2012 Apocalyptic Planet Excerpt: Tibet Our purpose here was to navigate a stretch of river no one had yet attempted... September 04, 2012 Apocalyptic Planet Excerpt: Chilean Patagonia We were kids in a topographic museum full of ice sculptures... August 31, 2012 Apocalyptic Planet Excerpt: St. Lawrence Island, AK Hundreds of exhumed walrus skulls and countless little artifacts lay about; busted sled runners and bone ice scrapers... August 30, 2012 Apocalyptic Planet Trailer The earth is a story-teller, and in some places it tells the story of the end... August 28, 2012 Apocalyptic Planet Excerpt: Atacama Desert This is how you move across emptiness... August 19, 2012 Apocalyptic Planet Excerpt: Greenland August 10, 2012 Apocalyptic Planet Excerpt: Greenland A space had opened between storms, and I picked up this flight to camp... March 07, 2011 On Patagonian Ice Dancing around on the toes of his crampons, he looks off the edge of our iceberg across a jumble of floating, bobbing chunks... February 09, 2011 In Patagonia... Its eyes go dim as he pumps out the last of its blood with a governing turn of his wrist... December 28, 2010 Dry Pinacate Scattered dead across the flats, they have already turned to bone... November 15, 2010 After September 11th The first flight I could get out of New York, the airport had an almost deserted feel... November 05, 2010 Entering the Dunes Absolute desolation, not a single living thing to the horizon. Don't panic... September 11, 2010 An 'antiquities' interview with Zen Master Sheng-Yen just before his death The easiest way to remove the head of a stone Buddha is to wrap it in blankets and strike it with a wooden bat... August 15, 2010 What it's like in Patagonia All you can see is the lightless inside of your small tent, no reference but for the sound of multi-thousand ton concussions echoing from peak to peak... August 11, 2010 My new book, Finders Keepers, is out! Beyond what most people think about archaeology--with its cleanly numbered dates, and discoveries--lies a vibrant and controversial realm of scientists, thieves, and contested land claims... June 04, 2010 Thank you Gulf of Mexico... For taking the blow for me... April 18, 2010 In the Light of Iceland's Volcano... We arrived upon lakes and tongues of molten rock, a bright field hissing and crackling... March 22, 2010 Nef Glacier, Patagonia... At night I lay in my tent listening to the thunder of collapsing seracs, multi-ton columns of ice breaking free and falling a thousand feet... February 27, 2010 Word from southern Chile Fortunately, for me at least, this was the night before the earthquake. The next morning I took the first flight out of Santiago, 20 hours before the region was hit by an 8.8... November 16, 2009 Solitary toadness... I become acutely aware of the piped in sound of chirping frogs. November 15, 2009 Three mornings in the Adirondacks... First dawn comes with crisp, clear light, boulders on the lake like granite bergs. Second morning is a fizzling rain on the water. November 11, 2009 Finding the city's sweet spot... An old, dusty-eyed buck crosses a footbridge in DC under the roar of traffic. October 31, 2009 Dispatch from the East Coast I swear I'm trying to breathe through plastic wrap... September 26, 2009 Dispatch from Seattle Nature is an ugly bitch with an asphalt tongue... September 25, 2009 Water Water Everywhere You notice we don't go to the moon or Mars looking for gold, we go looking for water... September 21, 2009 Happy equinox I found last night's fawn unraveled down the trail this morning... September 18, 2009 Shooting range... Sitting at a desk in dry clay hills on a mound of brass caps and shells. September 09, 2009 Morning... My boys naked and paint-streaked in boulders twice as big for them as they are for me. August 23, 2009 A moment with a bear... Young bear in a trap this morning, moaning like a whale, smelling primeval, like earth and fear. August 03, 2009 Naming a mountain... Like many Hopi words, Piestewa is the sound water makes. It means many things: Dark-eye-of-the-city; Prayers-for-rain; Mother-of-two-found-buried-in-the-desert... July 17, 2009 A brush with a fearsome creature... Other humans are bad enough, but animals, creatures who do not speak English, whom you cannot reason with, seem to be complete unknowns... June 26, 2009 The past looking back at us... The prettier the design, the longer I held it, as if it were an eye opening in my hand, staring out from the other end of time... June 12, 2009 Artifact raid in the Four Corners... One prominent pothunter is dead and another couple dozen are under indictment. A culture of diggers who collect and sell human history below the radar is now sharply exposed, and what it reveals challenges the boundaries of right and wrong... June 08, 2009 Matrimony Spring closed... Finding out it was closed felt like a stomach punch, and my first reaction was that I should take a hacksaw to it in the middle of the night and let water spatter against the ground once more... June 05, 2009 Obsessed with the Oldness of Things... I met an elderly pothunter who took off his bracelet and handed it to me, an inlay of silver and turquoise probably a century and a half old. "You know where I got that?" he asked. "Off a dead Navajo." February 09, 2009 Chocolate is civilization... It is the cherry on top of Southwest archaeology... January 16, 2009 How to Approach Wildlife Make eye contact, but only for a moment... January 13, 2009 Giving Birth to the World Silhouettes wavered as energy rose around the shaman... December 14, 2008 Map of the Dead His bucket started coming up with broken pots and bones... November 29, 2008 The Trouble with Sex We fled, sprinting through clearings, avoiding stands of oakbrush that ignited with meteoric speed... October 04, 2008 The Trouble With Cell Phones It felt much the way I thought it would, the reason I vowed not to do it... September 22, 2008 Seeing Ghosts I can see them now, luminous, like mirages... August 12, 2008 Sand Dreaming To preserve our water, we practice the art of self-burial... April 30, 2008 Living in a World of Animals In April near Big Bear Lake east of Los Angeles a man died when he was attacked by a grizzly bear... April 24, 2008 Salvation for Air Travel Slaves On the bright side, I've become an accidental connoisseur of airports... February 25, 2008 Camp Counselors in Hell I lifted up a writhing and legless little creature, pale and fat as a baby. I popped it into my mouth. I chewed. I swallowed... December 28, 2007 Tibet #1 No one has ever tried it before. It is too remote, too unknown... December 11, 2007 Rez #1 The place smelled of horse leather and sheep. He spoke not a word of English... November 30, 2007 Digging The root sought anchorage for its tree, wrapped around a buried vessel, and crushed it in black silence... November 09, 2007 Malpais Orion fades over a wilderness of ancient craters, rough lava flows stubbled with tall, bow-legged pine trees... July 16, 2007 The Stolen Pot I think about returning it to the desert where it came from, but I can't... July 07, 2007 Dune Walking Behind sunglasses my eyes are fixed on nothing, and at times I am dreaming, but awake. I do not know if my eyes are opened or closed. Dunes roll away forever... February 02, 2007 In the esteem of the jaguar I feel like a master tracker, expert trickster, just about to make my kill, ready to rush forward at a blinding sprint and dive onto my companion's back. His shriek will be well worth the effort. January 21, 2007 Canyonlands There was a canyon, nowhere in Utah. It was November. I don't remember exactly how many days we were out on foot at this point, eighteen, maybe twenty. We didn't use trails. In fact, we did not have a map, a compass, anything of the sort. January 15, 2007 Trespassing on Mauna Ulu I walked from Mauna Ulu into its endless fields of lava, ropes of rock braided together, places as curved and gently chambered as the inside of an ear. For miles I carried the fear of the black helicopter, rubbing it between the fingers of my imagination,

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