John Muir’s romantic vision obscured Indigenous ownership of the land—but a new generation is pulling away the veil.

What coronavirus can teach us about hope.

Wanders through the emptied post-American landscape.

On the end of Harvey Weinstein.

On living in dark times.

Boomtown San Francisco, as seen from the Google Bus.

The myth of “real” America just won’t go away.

“The true impact of activism may not be felt for a generation. That alone is reason to fight.”

An essay on power.

“He is, as of this writing, the most mocked man in the world.”

On water in the West, climate change, and how the birth of modern environmentalism lies at the bottom of Lake Powell.

Alex Nieto died because a series of white men saw him as a menacing intruder in the place he’d spent his whole life.

“You read enough books in which people like you are disposable, or are dirt, or are silent, absent, or worthless, and it makes an impact on you. Because art makes the world, because it matters, because it makes us. Or breaks us.”

What it takes to deliver basic medical care to the most remote corners of the Himalayas.

On the stories we tell ourselves about happiness and the indecent questions we ask women who decided not to become moms.

The pandemic of violence against women, the threats online, and the harassment on the streets are ongoing. But women’s voices assumed an unprecedented power in 2014.

What to do about climate change.

Parking garages, prisons, freeways and the world of stuff we’re not supposed to look at.

On dirty laundry and the meaning of freedom.

A meditation on the “out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant.”