To Chester

Baby's first picture! Last week I got a new car. At 23, in post-college autumn, I bought my first car just days after my birthday. I was moving to the Poconos for a job and a car was a necessity. I got a loan from my grandparents and bought a 2012 Ford Escape with 42,000 …

Top Books of 2024

I read 46 books in 2024---a little over 13,000 pages---and here are some of my favs, in no particular order. If God Was a Virus by Seema YasminThis was my favorite book of poetry I read this year. Dr. Yasmin is a medical doctor, professor, and journalist, and this book covers her experience dealing with …

Alpenglow: A Nepal Travel Diary

Annapurna right before sunrise. Before Here's what you need to know about my before: I studied abroad in India and the mountains wedged themselves somewhere between my fifth and eleventh vertebrae. I vowed to go back, to feel the Himalaya more deeply, to venture beyond the Garhwali range. I wanted to go for my 30th, …

welcome back

Another journey in the outdoors. Trying to get outside more, trying to write more. There & back again. For HCV 5725. For Terry Tempest Williams. Day 1 Day 1 is 15 hours of driving. It was supposed to be 12 hours of driving and spending the night in Salt Lake City, but instead it's three …

Best Books of 2023

Annnnndddd the winners are... Interior Chinatown by Charles YuThis is arguably my favorite book of the year. I have never read a single book like this. My friend read this book per my suggestion (shoutout to the real ones), and when discussing it, I compared it to the Barbie movie and how the line between …

Pink Summer

This is the only picture I have that remotely involves either Barbie or Taylor. It is September. September is a month of muddled change, a month of sunsets and back-to-school and the idea of autumn, which doesn't exist in any profound way on the California coast. September definitively marks the end of summer and the …

superbloom

It's a superbloom this year. It rained and gusted and poured and belched, and now the hills are a mosaic of color. Only once or twice a decade, scientists say, will a superbloom like this appear. I've visited the flowers five times over the course of about a month. Three different locations. Just like the …

10 books of 2022

I read a bunch this year, and it was a good time. I always try to read broadly--fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young adult, books with dragons, books without dragons, you know how it is. I've done a couple of book lists over the years, and I am always flattered and amazed that people read my recommendations …

it is fall, i guess

It is fall, I guess, and none of the leaves are turning color. That's not true. The western sycamores in Big Sur are. The coast live oak whose leaves perpetually carpet camp's trails. The lone sugar maple in Yosemite whose blood heart leaves people drive three, four hours just to see, just to witness. I …

vignettes from a wedding that wasn’t mine

This was my camp setup for the three nights I spent helping/attending wedding stuff. The silliest, honestly. (Picnic table not pictured; that really brought it all together.) I went to a wedding on July 23 for my best friend from college. All of my memories of her are good ones. We were study abroad roommates …