• As deep waters warm and this seasonal circulation gets disrupted … it could reorganize food webs, increase non-native invasive species, and … could potentially lead to more toxic algal blooms in the Great Lakes.

    Even the Great Lakes’ deepest waters are now warming | Grist

  • “We call this a century project[.] … To get it to look even somewhat like it did before the blight is going to take centuries. It’s for the next generation—it’s planting a tree you’ll never enjoy the shade of.”

    The Demise and Potential Revival of the American Chestnut | Sierra

  • More on bears. Continued human encroachment on wild spaces clashes with conservation & wildlife management.

    [W]hat happened next was violent. And painful. And gruesome. An interaction beset by blood and an anguished cry.

    Close Encounters of the Worst Kind | Sports Illustrated

  • The full-circle irony of all this is that coyotes and bobcats are annihilating prey, which themselves are wildlife killers.

    Takeaways:

    • Urban wildlife ecology is fascinating.
    • Keep your housepets inside.

    The Cats and Dogs Who Eat Cats and Dogs | Terrain

  • Maps showing the historical range of grizzlies color virtually the entire Pacific coast of North America but leave Vancouver Island oddly blank. And yet, in the spring of 2020, at least seven grizzlies were spotted roaming the island’s east coast.

    Where Now Grizzly Bear? | Hakai

  • More snow fell yesterday. The windrows left by the snowplows in the open fields along the county highway are now as tall as a Volvo SUV.

  • I’m not sure where I’m putting the shoveling from the next snowfall.

  • What happens if a human — or to be precise, a climate scientist, both privileged and cursed to understand the depth of the problem — lets the full catastrophe in?

    The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try. | ProPublica

  • Up until this article, León’s project has been a closely guarded secret. Not even the local Spanish marine biologists know what’s happening.

    Seeding the Ocean: Inside a Michelin-Starred Chef’s Revolutionary Quest to Harvest Rice From the Sea | Time

  • Blackout, whiteout.

  • Hoarfrost.

  • Out onto the ice.

  • Fantastic afternoon snowshoeing. Just me, my gear, and the best jazz of the year in my ears.

  • Now that’s better.

  • Lost in Space

    We use our location as a way to think about our identity. In the case of the cosmos the timescale is well beyond our very short lifetimes or even beyond our comprehension. Some of the answers to these questions won’t be solved while we are still here but will be left to the incoming generations and the truth is there are questions that will simply be passed on and never answered. The quest might seem a bit nonsensical. Why does it matter when or how the universe began? Why does it matter when or how it ends? It matters for the same reason your locations throughout your life carry context for who you are. We exist on a timeline together — we pop into existence and then one day we stop. It matters for the same reason one of the first questions you learn to ask in another language is, “where are you from?” To know where you are at any given time is a frame of reference in which to measure your life in some way and in many ways those locations, those slices of time, hold a great deal of meaning.

    A poignant reflection on the meaning of existence in a universe we’ll never understand.

    An Atlas of the Cosmos | Longreads

  • Jupiter & Saturn’s Great Conjunction +1. It was overcast yesterday, so while I didn’t see them at their closest, what I saw today still swept me with wonder. I hope I’m still around for the one on 15 March 2080.

  • I’m pleased to see that Minnesota-based climate journalist & scientist Eric Holthaus, my favorite writer from the soon-to-be-shuttered slow news site The Correspondent, has started his own Substack newsletter, The Phoenix.

  • Before big farms, this plant alone could feed many people… Grandmothers said these turnips point towards each other, so you’ll always know where the next one will be.

    I missed this article back in October.

    Thíŋpsiŋla: The Edible Bounty Beneath the Great Plains | Serious Eats

  • Unfestive tree hunt.

  • In the end is my beginning.

    I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
    For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
    For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
    But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
    Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
    So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

    — T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”

  • Brisk & sunny.

  • Our first snowfall of the year came this afternoon. I went for a two hour walk in it, rejoicing at the descending flakes. Jakob Bro’s Returnings was the perfect soundtrack, particularly “Oktober” and “Lyskaster.”

  • Autumn Afternoon Walk, in three movements.

    I.

    II.

    III.

  • Mars. The skies are absolutely clear tonight, making it feel like you can see straight through the cosmos. Jupiter & Saturn are quite bright, too.

  • Headspace.

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