From far-flung expeditions to deep fireside chats, travel has the power to change us. When done well, it can also positively change the places we visit—a fact I learned during a recent safari in southern Tanzania. As a wildlife enthusiast, I often plan my trips around local fauna. Sure, I follow responsible wildlife tourism guidelines, […]
Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused oil prices to shoot up, electric vehicles were having a moment. The ad lineup for the Super Bowl is a reasonable barometer of automakers’ priorities, and for the 2022 game, six companies, from Chevy to newcomer Polestar, ran commercials featuring electric vehicles (up from just one last year). […]
“All we can do is breathe the air of the period we live in, carry with us the special burdens of the time, and grow up within those confines. That’s just how things are.” —Haruki Murakami, Abandoning a Cat I’d been stuck up in the ash tree for probably half an hour, looking down and […]
Back in 1989, I was a restless college freshman looking for a spring break alternative to South Padre Island. So I hopped in a van crammed with several fellow geology students and one brave professor, and we drove 1,400 miles from Minnesota to Big Bend, the first national park I had the opportunity to visit. […]
Like most people in Koma, a village in the vast desert of Nepal’s remote Dolpa district, Dakpa Gurung has never had it easy. Since his youth in this tiny town of a few low stone homes and terraced wheat fields, he has scraped a living out of the dramatic landscape on foot, shepherding large flocks […]
Dear Sundog: I’ve been obsessed with rocks since I was a kid. I’d walk riverbeds and shorelines with my head down, picking up everything that caught my eye and pocketing the ones that captured my imagination. I found a fossilized fern once in a layered stone in my favorite part of my home state. It […]
Whenever my four-year-old daughter, Josephine, and I visit a library, she runs straight past the children’s nonfiction section—packed with information about animals, ecosystems, and environmental issues—and makes a beeline for the storybooks. Like most humans, her brain is hardwired to learn through stories, and her favorites involve talking animals, struggles between good and evil, and […]
I love pooping outside. One morning in Alaska, a humpback whale breached offshore just as I squatted with my pants around my ankles. Another morning, in Idaho, I watched hummingbirds sip nectar from wildflowers as I crouched at the edge of a meadow. And at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I sat on a […]
Perhaps you, like me, have been getting flooded by Earth Day ads. There is so much you can do to save the planet, they scream. Pay money to plant a tree! Come to a Zoom meet and greet with tech bros who are making sustainable apps! Watch Nascar drivers race a supposedly carbon-neutral car! Buy […]
In 2018, former President Barack Obama sat down with David Letterman on the pilot of the comedian’s Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. It was Obama’s first talk show interview since leaving office, and the most revealing insight into what Obama’s long post-presidency might look like–he was only 55 years old at the end […]